How many people would you invite if you have to guarantee 175?

LADY324

We are getting married at the Tides in the upstairs room and we have to guarantee 175 people.  Our budget only allows us to have 200 tops!  How many people would you invite to try and get between 175 and 200?  We only have one family of 4 that is out of state who we know are definitely coming.

We are going to be sending out save the dates as well.  Pretty much everyone invited are pretty local so we don't have a lot of people traveling a long distance.  How many would you invite? 

I was thinking around 215?  I would rather go under then over.  If we have to eat the cost for a couple of plates I would rather that then end up over 200.

goaliegirl

We invited about 225-230 and ended up around 180 if I remember correctly.   

Just because people are local doesn't gaurantee that they will be able to come.  They may have other obligations the day of your wedding that may prevent them from coming.   And the OOT people sometimes surprise you and end up coming when you think they won't....it is really very hard to predict these types of things. 

We got married at the Tides and at one point, I was worried about reaching the minimum of 175 and they told us that we could pay for our vendors and have them count towards the minimum so that is something to keep in mind as you get closer.

kasabby

They usually say about 10-12% of the guests that you invite decline--I would say about 200-215 should do it. 

LADY324

Thanks ladies I do realize that since it's in the summer people will be on vacation as well.  It's soo hard to estimate!  I just don't want us to be in a tight pinch if more people say yes then we expect!

mbcdefg

You really never know, like Laurie said. We had a lot of people surprise us by declining, and a lot of people surprise us by attending. We also had some last-minute additions and last-minute no-shows.

Plus, our guest list was VERY different from the time we drafted it (around 8 months before the wedding) to the time we actually sent out invitations. We lost touch with a lot of people - not from falling outs, just moving on with life. I'm glad we didn't send out STDs because then we would've been obligated to invite a lot of people we didn't really want to invite at the end, and space was tight as it was.

If your budget can only accommodate 200 people, I really wouldn't invite more than that, personally. What happens if 215 people somehow say yes? You can always send out a few more invitations near the end, or ask people to come and fill the seats if you know they wouldn't mind (maybe some understanding coworkers, or friends of your siblings who wouldn't otherwise be invited).

LADY324

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_new-jersey_many-people-would-invite-gaurantee-175?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:90Discussion:e9713bb0-41a5-4551-809a-d1eab5157d3cPost:7742f878-cc4b-4491-9197-94ad33acca0b">Re: How many people would you invite if you have to guarantee 175?</a>:
[QUOTE]You really never know, like Laurie said. We had a lot of people surprise us by declining, and a lot of people surprise us by attending. We also had some last-minute additions and last-minute no-shows. Plus, our guest list was VERY different from the time we drafted it (around 8 months before the wedding) to the time we actually sent out invitations. We lost touch with a lot of people - not from falling outs, just moving on with life. I'm glad we didn't send out STDs because then we would've been obligated to invite a lot of people we didn't really want to invite at the end, and space was tight as it was. If your budget can only accommodate 200 people, I really wouldn't invite more than that, personally. What happens if 215 people somehow say yes? You can always send out a few more invitations near the end, or ask people to come and fill the seats if you know they wouldn't mind (maybe some understanding coworkers, or friends of your siblings who wouldn't otherwise be invited).
Posted by mbcdefg[/QUOTE]

Thanks good point with the save the dates.  We are only going to send them to our family members and our very close friends.  I do not plan on sending them to everyone just in case we change our minds about some of them. 

MissButters

I probably wouldn't invite much more than your budget would allow.  Worst case scenario, you end up paying for more people than coming (such as you only have 165 instead of 175), but you're not going over your budget. I personally would rather pay a little more per person and be under budget (so get less people than the minimum), than invite too many and then be over budget.

vjt730

i would invite like 250 some people will surprise you who you think can come cant and people wont bring guests...

GolfChick78

I don't think there's any single or "average" answer.  I have a lot of family up in VT and I know they're ALL coming.  We might hit a few people taking vacations, but I think we'll end up pretty close to 100% attending (but we're also not inviting people that we would rather not have or we know would rather not come but are being invited because they should).  So I think the only way to get to a meaniful answer is stting down with your list and thinking about the odds one at a time.

goaliegirl

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_new-jersey_many-people-would-invite-gaurantee-175?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:90Discussion:e9713bb0-41a5-4551-809a-d1eab5157d3cPost:23dd76ef-6ae7-4ef3-bd96-f4dd5374ecba">Re: How many people would you invite if you have to guarantee 175?</a>:
[QUOTE]I don't think there's any single or "average" answer.  I have a lot of family up in VT and I know they're ALL coming.  We might hit a few people taking vacations, <strong>but I think we'll end up pretty close to 100% attending</strong> (but we're also not inviting people that we would rather not have or we know would rather not come but are being invited because they should).  So I think the only way to get to a meaniful answer is stting down with your list and thinking about the odds one at a time.
Posted by GolfChick78[/QUOTE]

I would never assume this!   You will be quite surprised when it comes to weddings which people say yes and which say no....you have no idea what people's schedules will be, etc.   I don't think it is a good idea to assume that 100% of the people you invite will attend.    As I said earlier, it is really impossible to figure out exactly who will come in advance.  You can get a ROUGH estimate of what you think is likely, but things change over time and things come up that you have no control over.    

mbcdefg

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_new-jersey_many-people-would-invite-gaurantee-175?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:90Discussion:e9713bb0-41a5-4551-809a-d1eab5157d3cPost:6fd15a9e-4e63-401b-bca5-dc863e903a1a">Re: How many people would you invite if you have to guarantee 175?</a>:
[QUOTE]In Response to Re: How many people would you invite if you have to guarantee 175? : I would never assume this!   You will be quite surprised when it comes to weddings which people say yes and which say no....you have no idea what people's schedules will be, etc.  <strong> I don't think it is a good idea to assume that 100% of the people you invite will attend.</strong>    As I said earlier, it is really impossible to figure out exactly who will come in advance.  You can get a ROUGH estimate of what you think is likely, but things change over time and things come up that you have no control over.    
Posted by goaliegirl[/QUOTE]

I agree that it's (usually) not realistic that 100% will actually show up (unless it's a smaller wedding), but I think it's smart to financially<em> plan</em> for that to be the case. So you're not stuck with more guests than expected and you wind up short on cash. I don't think it's a big deal if the room will hold 200 and you invite 215, but inviting 250+ is not a great idea.

Our reception room could hold 160 people, and we had to guarantee at least 125. We wound up inviting 180, and we were really stressed out when we sent out the invites because we thought we'd have maybe 150-160 say yes and our room would be packed. And we had some panicky moments where we thought that we might even get 170.

We wound up having about 120 attend (thanks to some last-minute bailouts, grrr). So we actually paid for five people who never showed up. Which wasn't a huge deal, but it was annoying nonetheless. It pretty much worked out for us in the end, but I certainly could've done without those couple weeks where we were getting stressed and pissy at each other because we were panicking about our final headcount being too high.

vjt730

i agree with pp .. i thought i was gonna have barely any no's and now it looks like im going to be under my min, i wish i was over i would rather pay more for people to be there than not have enough people and pay for empty seats!

cutiepie12702

Our minimum is 140 and we are inviting about 180. My friend had a 175 minimum and invited 220 and I think she just made it by either 175 or 177. She was very surprised at how many people declined, most of them were her FI's good friends who ended up having business trips and other obligations. If I was you, I'd stick around the 210 invite range.

TaraK22

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_new-jersey_many-people-would-invite-gaurantee-175?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:90Discussion:e9713bb0-41a5-4551-809a-d1eab5157d3cPost:7742f878-cc4b-4491-9197-94ad33acca0b">Re: How many people would you invite if you have to guarantee 175?</a>:
[QUOTE] You can always send out a few more invitations near the end, or ask people to come and fill the seats if you know they wouldn't mind (maybe some understanding coworkers, or friends of your siblings who wouldn't otherwise be invited).
Posted by mbcdefg[/QUOTE]

The problem that I'm struggling with the guest list, is that if you do what's written above, how do you avoid the inevitable "B-list" scenario?

stapletond

We guarenteed 175 for a summer wedding.  We invited 280, but our final number was 210.  Many people didn't bring guests we invited them with.

I wouldn't invite more people than you can afford....there is always a chance that more people will come than you expect!

demarcosjd

As pp mentioned it is hard to tell. For us we had a lot of OOT guest decline and majority of our single friends who we all invited with a guest came alone. We invited 208 and ended up being 4 under our minimum of 150. We also had no shows and last minute cancels. I think its better to invite more then scrounge for last minute invites.

VivianM27

I would invite 250.  But 230, at least. 

A friend of mine invited 240 and only had about 180 come.