RSVP Formula

adrl

Does anyone have a tried and true formula for how many guests we should expect at the reception? If we invite X, how many will show?

For a large wedding - several hundred - the difference between 60% and 70% can be huge.
 
Thanks!

betrothed123

Yup, 100%

Plan on every person you invite attending.  It's been known to happen.

kate51485

You should expect 100% of what you invite. 

laurenclaire1386

Please please please have enough food, drink, and chairs for everyone you invite. There's no way to know until you get the response cards back how many will be attending. Don't count on no shows.

MyNameIsNot

If you invite X, be ready for X.  Only when RSVPs come back can you make changes.

JK10910

Yeah, wait until your get your RSVPs back, count how many people say they are attending, and voila!  Magic number.

nda_roxybabe

The formula is: #of guest invited = # you should count on coming

vallyhoo

I heard you should use the quadratic formula. That's a tried and true formula.

JessAndTrav

What they said. Plan for who you've invited. We Only had 60 or so out of nearly 300 say no.

ohwhynot

For budgeting purposes, we're acting as if 100% will show, and 100% will bring their children..  That way, if any of the actual numbers are lower, we'll have more money than we thought we'd need. 

Kati0105

I've heard 70% but I think it varies widely based on your guest list.  As the PPs said, you should never invite more people than you can accommodate and afford, but as far as anticipating how many guests you'll actually have you really have to look through your guest list and try to figure out who is likely to come.  Based on the economy and how many OOTers we have, we are expecting to have around 120-140 attendees out of the 190 we are inviting.  But if we were inviting 190 locals, I would expect a much higher turnout.

sucrets4

# of invites x 2.5 / the date your wedding falls on + pi - the forecasted air temperature in Celsius.

Voila!

EmmaBride2B

Use one of these:

http://tinyurl.com/5x5hsp

It's going to be about as accurate as anything.

SarahPLiz

I say you invite lots of people, but stop accepting RSVPs when you get to 70%.. then you can prove the formula right. It can be like a contest for who can get their RSVP in the fastest!!

DOH! Always count on 100%.

BecW2be

I think if you divide the number of invited guests by 1, then multiply by 1.0, and then divide by 1.00 you'll have a pretty good guest estimate.

ring_pop

Funnily enough, we actually knew all of our guests well enough that we were almost exactly right about who would and wouldn't show up. Imagine that.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

Well... it really depends on a lot of circumstances. My FI and I both live in a different state from our families and most of our college and high school friends. I am 100% sure that FI's 99 year old grandmother won't be able to travel here, and 99% sure my friend in Israel who is moving the month after my wedding won't be able to fly back for it. In fact, going through the list, about 20% of the people I'm inviting are on the "90% sure they aren't coming" list. If our wedding was local for 99% of our guests, it might be different.

But if, magically, everyone shows up, or someone brings along 10 extra people or something, we'll have enough money, food, drink and space to accomodate them.

bombtones

We planned on everyone coming for budget reasons, but ended up with about a 20% decline. A lot of them were adult cousins and a few OOT friends. We used the extra money from the declines to upgrade to chivari chairs.