How many guests to expect?

MrsH8172010

We invited about 250 people (sent out STDs)? How many people is it realistic to expect? We do have quite a bit of OOT guests..TIA : )

sarack

I would expect all 250. Plan for that many. If less come great.I've heard a lot of stuff about 10-25% not showing up but you can never be sure. Sounds like you are going to have a large wedding! :)How out of town are the guests? What is the date of your wedding?

BrandyL10

I agree. Plan for all. That is what i'm doing. Better safe than sorry. If you get a heads up about people not being able to attend, then you can use that info in your planning. But I don't believe the whole percentage thing.

csartini

Well, we invited about 275 and a little over 200 showed. We also had a ton of out of town guests - mostly from California. Every wedding is different though

LauraLynneC

expect all of them.  Then let one crazy cousin pick a fight with you and have your entire family bag on your wedding saving you thousands of dollars.  hopefully your family/friends are less dramatic than mine.  Sorry - back to the regularly scheduled topic. Expect all of them.  There's no formula for how many come.

uwhuskygirl

You have to account for 100% of them showing up. We invited some where around 275 or 280 and ended up having about 215 come. I think we were about 85% local, 12% OOT and 3% OOC (out of country)

jesgreg

Every single person could show up and the worst thing to do is plan for less or over extend yourself.  We invited around 120 and we think somewhere between 65-80 will come (every guest is OOT and people have been pretty up front with us about if they would be coming or not).  Who knows though, we could have 120 when everything is said and done or have only 30.

dmw_2010

We're inviting around 160, and I figure we'll have somewhere in between 100 and 150 show up. More than half is OOT, so we'll see what happens.

sjlarobadiere

I've been told to use an 80% "rule". We have about 144 on our guets list (including us, kids, guests dates and family from OOT). We are expecting with the 80% number to have about 115-120 there. Which to me sounds just about right considering young kids not eatting with us (having a seperate room for them) and Family from Maine not coming.My WC for my venue seems to agree that's a rather good rule becuase we know for sure a few won't be making it from OOT.

MrsH8172010

Thanks, I guess we will just plan for 250 then.. : /The thing is after 175 we have to start seating people outside which is fine because it's just right outside and it's permanantly tented and very nice patio area, I just would rather have everyone together!And our wedding is on a Tuesday in August and we invited people from all over, AZ, CA, NE, MN, Germany and more soo.. Our ideal stuation would be 175! I guess we will see...Thanks again! : )

sarack

You're getting married on a Tuesday? That is cool! Our 10th anniversary is on on July 19, 2010 and I would have loved that day but it was a monday. If I would have known other people do weekdays I might have done it.   I've been to a Thursday wedding but only like 30 people were there.

MrsH8172010

Yeah that will be our 6th anniversary from when we started dating! : ) We thought about doing another date to make it a Saturday, but we really wanted that day and we thought we have a lot of OOT guest so if they come they'll probably have to take a couple days off work anyways, and we just figured whoever really wants to be there will be there! : ) Not to mention all the discounts we've been offered!

melissa82

I know everyone says to plan for everyone but honestly not everyone is going to come. I've only heard of that happening with small, local guest lists--not ones with 250 people from all over the world. I think you'll come in around 200.

MrsH8172010

Yay Melissa you give me some hope!! Haha!

amandasw

I disagree with the knot mantra "expect everyone to show up", mainly because that's just not true for every group.   We made our excel sheet with the number invited, how many we realistically thought would come (don't 'hope' they won't show up, be honest) and the rsvp number.  We were almost 99% correct and many of the ones we got wrong said they couldn't come when we thought they would.  All in all, we invited 250 and got closer to 150 the day of.  That said, be very careful.  You definitely don't want to end up in a situation where you run out of room etc. 

MrsH8172010

Amandasw: good advice thanks! I also remember you saying that you had a student from UW as your videographer? Do you think that person might be interested in doing other weddings? We just want a video to remember our wedding not anything super amazing and that is a place we are willing spend less on..

amandasw

Yeah, I talk about it in my bio - the student was just my sister   She checked it out and then another friend did the recording (because my sister was my MOH).  Do you know anyone at UW?  The only silly thing about it is that you can only check it out for 2 days or something, so she had to keep going back every 2 days to re-check it out until we got back and DH could save it to his Mac (for some reason the cameras only like Mac and my sister only had a PC).  But that said, it really turned out great! 

amandasw

PS  If you don't know anyone, I could ask my sister if she would be willing to do it (she does have some experience with the camera since she had to use it for a class and that's how she knew about it).  Where is the wedding?  (we're in Seattle)