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Destination Brides -- Guest Attendance Rate

Dot825Dot825 member
First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment
in Louisiana-New Orleans
For those brides who had a destination wedding to NOLA, I'd appreciate it if you could tell me what percentage of your guest actually traveled?

I've been reading that for "destination weddings" you can expect between a 50% and 60% acceptance rate. But staying within the states (although a destination) is still a bit different then going to an island or another country.  One NOLA planner told me that NOLA destination weddings had an 80% rate which is typically higher than regular weddings in NOLA...

Thanks! 
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Re: Destination Brides -- Guest Attendance Rate

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    sasapurduesasapurdue member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    I have been wondering the same thing! We live here, but almost all of our guests are not from NOLA or even the south. We think most of our invitees will come but won't bring theirs kids. Curious what other people have experienced!
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    scowie15scowie15 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Answer First Comment
    Wedding planners have told me that attendance rates for NOLA weddings are higher than other destination weddings, but I would doubt if it would be as high as 80 percent.  Maybe 70.  
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    hasinclair_23048411hasinclair_23048411 member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    We had about 80% accept their invitations, with most of those from out of state.  I was pleasantly surprised at how many people made the trip.
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    sasapurduesasapurdue member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    Helpful! We were predicting about 75%.
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    Ashoes123Ashoes123 member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    I think it drastically changes depending on the size of your guest list and how much advance warning you give them.  Our guest list is pretty small and we gave everyone about a year advance notice of the date and we are expecting a 90% attendance.  A lot of our list has never visited New Orleans and are super psyched about the trip! 
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    Dot825Dot825 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment
    This both excites me and terrifies me lol.  We were hopefully using the "destination wedding" as a tool to limit the amount of guests we have coming (i.e., our 50 cousins ughhhh). Seems like this won't be the case! :)
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    perupiraperupira member
    First Comment First Anniversary
    Our wedding is still upcoming, but we've heard back from most of our guests at this point. We are right at 60% for adults (far fewer are bringing their kids along than we were expecting).
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    alm1016alm1016 member
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment
    We invited 150 people to our wedding knowing most wouldn't go.  We were 100% out of town...no locals (not even ourselves).  We ended up with 96 people total.  

    We had an adult only wedding so nobody brought their children.  Most laughed and said they didn't want to bring them anyway. :-)
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    Aeb74Aeb74 member
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    My fiance asked something about specifying on the invitation "no children" and I didn't find it necessary either as our friends/family with children were ready for a weekend away and save the family trips for Disney and the like! 
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    guswomanguswoman member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    We are at 70% for mostly OOT guests. We did not do save the dates.
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    Dot825Dot825 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment
    anyone else want to share? :)
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    GeauxWedGeauxWed member
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    We're still getting our invitations back, but it looks like we have about 70% attending at this point with 90% of guests from out of town.

    We were actually expecting more because most planners we had spoken to said that 80-90% of out of towners make the trip for a NOLA wedding!
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    Aeb74Aeb74 member
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    Ours is about 50%.
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    edenisleedenisle member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment Name Dropper
    So happy to read this!!! We were originally planning for a more intimate wedding, but the guest list is growing at an alarming level!  Our venue maxes out at 120, so that is where I'm putting my foot down at the very least!  It's hard not to hurt feelings!
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    littledarlingnikkilittledarlingnikki member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment
    Same thing is happening to us Csylyn87!  We decided on doing a destination wedding to cut down our 180 person guest list and now ppl we thought would be definite no's are yes's!!!  Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited to have everyone I love to join us but now I have to feed them lol.  Just a suggestion though,  we are doing our initial save-the-dates (through evite) in waves.  1st wave are very importants, 2nd wave are importants, and 3rd wave will be the people we really want there but didn't think we could invite.  This is helping us immensely in controlling our guest list.
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    edenisleedenisle member
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    Littledarlingnikki...that's exactly what I'm doing!  I hate to be so cut-throat, but there has to be a line somewhere.  We started using a flow chart..."Have you spoken to this person within the last year?", "Would it make or break your day if they weren't there?" Etc.
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    Aeb74Aeb74 member
    First Answer 5 Love Its First Comment
    We had the "year rule" too.  If we hadn't seen them within a year, sorry!  No can do!  It was important to us to keep it intimate and be able to enjoy our time with our family/friends without scrambling to talk to everyone for two minutes each!  We had 35 guests, and I loved the intimate group! 
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    Dot825Dot825 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment
    Ok so we're finally getting back our invites so I'm excited to be posting about this!

    I successfully navigated an "A" and "B" list, which I didn't think I'd be able to pull off, but I did. We did not do save the dates.  Just tried to get invites out early enough to people. 

    We invited about 170 guests (all out of town) and got about a 55% "yes" rate (around 100 people).

    We are able to send out our entire B list which is about 37 people and mostly friends.  We have huge families hence why the disproportionate amount in the A's (seriously, 50 first cousins).  I haven't received my "b" responses yet.

    What I ended up doing was calculating based upon my budget (135) and my venue space (150 max) and sent knowing that I'd at least have an 85% retention rate based upon research.  It could've gone a bit wonky there at the end if everyone decided to show up, but after talking to my planner and discussing with my family, we figured it would be worth the risk. We had a lot of old folks who we knew wouldn't travel and I had to send a few "courtesy invites" after family friends sent gifts (but we knew they wouldn't go). 

    I guess what I learned from this is, you know your guests.  We only had 1 or 2 people actually surprise us by saying they would attend.  We almost correctly guessed who would go.

    In the end, we totally lucked out and I'm super excited!
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