Texas-Austin

Question!

How many people are you inviting and what are the challanges that you face with the guest list?

Re: Question!

  • edited December 2011
    We invited a total of 210 people (hoping for about 150). Our RSVPs are due on Friday and we still have 58 people that have not responded. It is incredibly frustrating considering we sent out invites over a month ago and put a little stamp on that response card. A lot of people are like "oh you know I'm coming"...no we don't...that's why there's an RSVP card!! Next week we're going to have to start calling people and I'm not looking forward to it. I'm hoping will get a mad rush of RSVPs in the next couple days around the deadline but I'm not really holding my breath. Another annoyance is people that responded with "YES" 2 attending...with no name! We are having a seating chart so this won't do!! We need a final count soon to share with all of our vendors so we don't end up paying extra fees (venue, food, drinks, cake, gelato, etc).

    Sorry this became a rant post - this has just been more frustrating than I was anticipating. Once I have a final count I'll be fine :)
  • edited December 2011
    I think our list is at 267 people, but we're really only expecting 100 to attend. The main reason the list is so large is because both my parents and the grooms parents wanted to invite our extended family (from out of town) to be courteous. I'd be really happy and surprised if any of our out of state guests rsvp'ed yes. It just feels a little scary to see the list is 267 people, but only plan on 100 though. I figure we can adjust our number as the date draws closer.
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  • edited December 2011

    i'm in the same boat as knsbride.  we invited 210 and are expecting 150.  we've had some trouble getting RSVPs as well.  ours are via our wedding website - you'd think it would be the elderly family members who would have trouble navigating the internet.  no, gradpa was the first to make sure one of the grandkids RSVPed for him.  at some point, when we had a dinner party at our house, we simply put a computer on the kitchen table and made our friends RSVP one after another.  they were giving us plenty of the "but you know we're coming!" as well.  and then there are some oddball situations like one couple accosting us with "we'd love to come to your rehearsal dinner - are we invited?" (no, they were not) or another friend refusing to RSVP because he's still trolling different bars to find a date, so at this point he doesn't know her name yet (he was invited without a guest and the wedding is less than a month away).  good times =)

  • erolliserollis member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its Name Dropper First Comment
    edited December 2011
    With the package we go we are only able to have 100 people. I think we can have more if we pay an arm and a leg for them. I will have to double check. This weekend Fiance, FMIL, my mom and myself are getting together and going over the guest list to finalize it. I do not want to invite to much more then 100 since we have a clear cut off that can attend.
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  • laleighmoorelaleighmoore member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    our guest list still isnt done.

    I think there will be about 130 invited, a lot of them are children and 99% are traveling from 3+ hours away or even out of state... and we are having a Sunday evening  ceremony.
    With that said, I dont think we will have a high turn out, we are budgeting for about 80 people but it is a school night so there are a lot of kids that I think will either be left at home or will prevent parents from leaving town to attend period.
    I am secretly hoping we get about 60 people to show (save $$$).
    I know this sounds rude but our immediate family will all be traveling from out of state so Sunday makes no difference to them, they will be taking off a week at work anyway. Our wedding was planned around his mother's school schedule as she is a teacher - March 27th is during their TN spring break.
    I have no RSVP's yet, I have not even sent out STD's (will get them out around Halloween).
    I hope we're not asking for too much trouble by sending out 2x as many invites as we expect to attend... an out of town sunday evening wedding during the school year.
    Phew!


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  • SarahPLizSarahPLiz member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Ours started out at 75 and now it is like 112 or something like that. We haven't had many challenges because we are paying for everything ourselves, so we get to make all the decisions. My dad did ask me last week to add 2 couples after we had already sent invites, but it was ok because we still have a month until the RSVP date. 

    We would love to have unlimited budget so we could throw a really big party and invite all of our friends, but we don't, so we just have really close friends, and 2 degrees of family (immediate, then aunts& uncles. Only 2 cousins who are more like siblings). We could have invited more family, but we had a vision for the reception and couldn't afford more people in that vision. 
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  • edited December 2011
    Just another note...the reason we invited so many people is because most of my family lives out of state (Maine and Connecticut)....to our surprise more than half of them are coming!!!
  • sheadaysheaday member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    We're inviting about 140 and we thinking anywhere from 90-110 will attend. This number doesn't count children but children are invited as well. Invitations go out next week! Woo!
  • cryalex24cryalex24 member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    We sent out 110 invites hoping we could stay under 100 well wedding is in 3 wks and right now our guest total is 107 with kids..
  • edited December 2011
    We're inviting about 35, and expecting about 25, give or take. We can't have more than 35. The issue is that we're not really inviting any extended family - it's immediate family and friends. My aunts are downright cruel to me, so J. said not to invite them and to blame him :). This is resulting in some family drama, but we're getting through it.
  • edited December 2011
    I am 11 days away. We invited 246 people (includes spouses and children) and we received 209 RSVP (Yes). We truly did not expect a big turnout granted that most of our friends are family are out of town but we have received so much love and support. Luckily we budgeted for all 246 guests.
  • edited December 2011
    we are inviting 180 people but expecting somewhere around 125-155.  The hardest thing for us is to scale it down.  It was battle royale when we were doing the guest list!  :)

    One of the blog I read gave a good tip about the RSVP cards with no names.  Number the card on the corner with a pencil and make a note of that number on your guest list so if you get a RSVP back with no names, no big deal!  Just look at the number you wrote down :)  So brilliant...will totally be doing this.
  • edited December 2011
    Wow.. these posts were good ladies!!

    KNS-- I am glad you brought up the no name issue, because Rita gave out a perfect way to resolve this.. or you could hand write each name in!

    We only want to pay for 80-100 people, but we have sent out 130 places on our STD's. FI's keep adding people and even though they are coming from Ohio--- it seems they all want to come. His family agreed to pay for the extra head count, so I am greatful for that, but am I crazy for wanting to keep my numbers small? I want to know the people there and be able to see the everyone.

    Thanks for participating!!
  • edited December 2011
    I have the same situation as many of the PPs: we invited 334 people, with 160 invitations sent out, because.... ours is an OOT wedding for most guests (though I have some friends and family in Austin as it's my hometown); FI's family/FIL's friends are from an entirely different part of the country and were invited as a courtesy; our friends are mostly traveling from the East Coast; we are not inviting children at all; and we're paying for it ourselves. We anticipated 150 guests and will probably be right around there - there are 129 RSVPs in so far. The only frustrating thing is people who just don't respond. I assume they aren't coming, but it's still annoying. The majority of them are extended family, so it's not actually our usually-lazy friends. Just rude relatives. Our deadline is tomorrow, so I'll have to start calling and emailing in the next few days to round up the laggards.
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  • edited December 2011
    Yes I agree that numbering the back of the response cards is a good idea. I had that written down in my wedding notebook but completely forgot to do it when invitations came around. We also thought about writing names but we decided against it incase we didn't know who the guest would be or if the whole "party" would be coming.

    Something that we did do on the RSVPs that's worked out well is we put a line for people to write their names and then had a box for "accepts with pleasure" a line for # attending and "declines with pleasure." # attending has been very helpful!!
  • edited December 2011
    Awww.. declines with pleasure? That sounds like they are happy to decline! I am sure that is not the case.. they probably just can't make it. LOL

    How many of you have planners who have offered to make the calls of non-responding guests? I know my day of planner will do that for me, so that I don't even have to worry about it. I think it is like $25 dollars extra, but to me.. it would be worth that time saver.
  • akg0053akg0053 member
    Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    We are inviting a total of 235, and that's including the vendors. Only about 140-150 will come though (a lot were courtesy invites for various cousins).

    One of the biggest challenges that we faced when making the guest list was, well, not forgetting any of the random cousins on FI's side. He has a huge family.
    118 image
    Not caring about missing RSVPs because there aren't any rocks!
  • edited December 2011
    yes i was tired last night! "Accepts with pleasure" and "Declines with regret"! and if my coordinator would call all of my guests I'd probably jump on that!!
  • edited December 2011
    I think that was the most annoying part is that we only received 50% of our response cards back. We did the calling ourselves between my mom, FI and I. We also got a list of guests at our hotel blocks so we could be sure to contact those folks as well in case they just forgot to send in their RSVP cards. Also, the numbering of the response cards worked for us. We received 3 blank ones.
  • edited December 2011
    Our biggest challange is what the growing guest list does to the budget. Right now we have invited about 150, but it originally was 120 and FI kept thinking of people that he HAD to send an invite to and then our parents threw in another 15 or so at the last minute. Invites go out today so we'll see how many actually RSVP.
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