My fiancee and I both have large families. Her family is mainly in TX and mine is scattered to the corners of the country and beyond. I know that traditionally invitations go out 6-8 weeks before the wedding, and that it is becoming accepted to send save the dates out, especially for weddings requiring travel, about 9 months before the wedding date. This all brings me to my question: Is there any acceptable way to get indications from our guests as to their intentions on whether they are able and likely to attend earlier? We have a *working* guest list of over 220, and have fallen in love with a venue that can only accommodate 150. We're also on a budget, and we would like to figure out a more fine-tuned approximate head count to give to the caterers, and to guesstimate our likely costs for food. We feel like a fairly large percentage of the travelling guests are likely to decline, and we've heard that you can typically count on 70%-80% responding with a "no". Still, we don't feel comfortable 'counting' on that, and If everyone responds in the affirmative, it'll be quite a disaster. Then again, if we cut the guest list *down*, and 70%-80% decline our invitation, it'll be a smaller affair than we would like to have!
Any suggestions or insight into this conundrum would be SO helpful. Thanks a lot!