Guest List / Destination Wedding Help Please!

hmg1985 · January 2014

Newly engaged since last Friday Both my fiance and myself are from and still reside in Michigan. He went to law school in Tampa, and during my time there visiting him, we fell in love with this one hotel on the beach with the most perfect tiki bar and outdoor garden area...anyways, while dating him I always envisioned if we ever were to get married, that it would be there on the beach. Now that getting married to him is a reality and we are starting to have legit talks about where and what and how much $, we have a big dilemma. I didn't know where else to put this question, hopefully you guys can help!

Both of us have HUGE immediate families. If our guest list were to ONLY include our parents, siblings, 1st Aunt's & Uncles, 1st cousins and their sig others, our guest list would be at 178 people. Add in our "1st Picks" of friends on both sides, and we are looking at around 280-300 people. I have never envisioned myself having a huge wedding, nor does my fiance. I know that if we have our dream wedding on the beach, that even if we invited all 300 people we would probably get around 100 or less to say yes to the travel. If we choose to have the wedding more local within a few hours drive of metro Detroit, our acceptance rate would be alot higher, as would our budget. Our decision isn't related to just expense of the wedding as we have saved a good chunk of money and will be gifted our honeymoon, as well as as both of my parents (divorced) are gifting us a huge portion of the wedding and support either location we decide. This is primarily about the number of guests.

So my questions are (after all of that background info - sorry):

- I plan on still inviting the same amount of people whether we have the wedding in Florida or Michigan. It is one of those situations because our families are so large that you cannot leave anyone out...trust me it is not worth the drama and I think that is rude anyways to do that. We really want to get married in Florida so since I know the acceptance rate will be down, how do I plan for that? Typically you don't receive the RSVP's till a couple months before the wedding day, correct?

- Do I state our location of the wedding on the Save The Date? (don't worry! I will still send out official invitations to everyone who gets a save the date!)

- How do you plan a budget (for food, alchol, favors, seating etc) when you have invited 300 but know that even in best case scenarios, at least half will not be able to make it. And is that rude to invite that many people then??

Has anyone else had this kind of situation?

I don't mean to offend or be rude to anyone and that is why I am coming here to the etiquette board for help Thank you!

SlothGoals · January 2014

hmg1985 said:

Newly engaged since last Friday Both my fiance and myself are from and still reside in Michigan. He went to law school in Tampa, and during my time there visiting him, we fell in love with this one hotel on the beach with the most perfect tiki bar and outdoor garden area...anyways, while dating him I always envisioned if we ever were to get married, that it would be there on the beach. Now that getting married to him is a reality and we are starting to have legit talks about where and what and how much $, we have a big dilemma. I didn't know where else to put this question, hopefully you guys can help!

Both of us have HUGE immediate families. If our guest list were to ONLY include our parents, siblings, 1st Aunt's & Uncles, 1st cousins and their sig others, our guest list would be at 178 people. Add in our "1st Picks" of friends on both sides, and we are looking at around 280-300 people. I have never envisioned myself having a huge wedding, nor does my fiance. I know that if we have our dream wedding on the beach, that even if we invited all 300 people we would probably get around 100 or less to say yes to the travel. If we choose to have the wedding more local within a few hours drive of metro Detroit, our acceptance rate would be alot higher, as would our budget. Our decision isn't related to just expense of the wedding as we have saved a good chunk of money and will be gifted our honeymoon, as well as as both of my parents (divorced) are gifting us a huge portion of the wedding and support either location we decide. This is primarily about the number of guests.

So my questions are (after all of that background info - sorry):

- I plan on still inviting the same amount of people whether we have the wedding in Florida or Michigan. It is one of those situations because our families are so large that you cannot leave anyone out...trust me it is not worth the drama and I think that is rude anyways to do that. We really want to get married in Florida so since I know the acceptance rate will be down, how do I plan for that? Typically you don't receive the RSVP's till a couple months before the wedding day, correct?

- Do I state our location of the wedding on the Save The Date? (don't worry! I will still send out official invitations to everyone who gets a save the date!)

- How do you plan a budget (for food, alchol, favors, seating etc) when you have invited 300 but know that even in best case scenarios, at least half will not be able to make it. And is that rude to invite that many people then??

Has anyone else had this kind of situation?

I don't mean to offend or be rude to anyone and that is why I am coming here to the etiquette board for help Thank you!

1) Plan for 100% attendance. And RSVP's will not come in a few months before the wedding, it's more like a few weeks before the wedding. You won't send invitations until 6-8 weeks before the wedding date.

2) Yes, you can if you want to. If you do that you might find a higher than expected RSVP rate because people will have more time to plan if they want to attend.

3) You budget for 100% attendance. You also need to take into consideration truly single people who may be in a relationship when invitations go out.

4) I haven't been in your situation but if you plan and budget for 100% attendance you won't have any problems.

ETA: Clarity

delujm0 · January 2014

I agree...you don't think that many people will come, but you won't know that for sure until about a month out from the wedding. You need to plan for 100% attendance. You don't know that random Aunts and Uncles might not be like "oh an excuse to go to FL! And Tampa is close to Orlando, so let's bring the whole family and go down to DIsney World afterwards!" People may decide to go and make a vacation out of it.

We invited 200 but realistically think at the MOST 150 will show. However, we're prepared in the event that all 200 people decide to come. we really hope that doesn't happen though, as it would put us at the top end of our venue's occupancy limit, and we'd like to have extra space to move around.

Either invite everyone, or draw a line in the sand - all aunts and uncles but not cousins, or no aunts/uncles/cousins and just have a very small wedding, etc.

mrs4everhart · January 2014

You absolutely have to budget for 100% attendance, no one likes to come up short money wise where a major event is concerned. No harm in extra cash left over.

Save The Dates are a great way to get a feel for who will and won't come (although you'll get plenty of on-the-fencers too). Not everyone will make mention of receiving one but MANY people will hit you up to let you know they got theirs (and when they do you'll start to get a feel for those that show real, legit interest versus those that probably won't attend). You can and should state your location on the STD. That's more than half the reason to send them out. Out of state (or country) travel is easiest on lots of notice. If they think the wedding will be in MI, not FL, you'll be getting skewed responses.

The standard time frame on sending invites is generally 6-8 weeks and I think if people are local, that's a great window. DW's I think present a lot of scenarios that are just different than local weddings. If by-the-book etiquette is super important to you do some research if the same time period is standard for DW's. It's not important to us so we plan on having our RSVP's on final lock down no later than 8 weeks before the wedding day, which means we'll be sending the invites out 3 months in advance. We're not expecting any of our guests to make their final decision and start their travel planning after the 8 week mark, so it shouldn't cause too much stress for anyone.

Tampa is gorgeous, good luck!

wrigleyville · January 2014

Be very, very careful about using the STDs to gauge attendance, though. Sometimes people say they can't make it, but then they're able to free up some vacation time and money and end up RSVP-ing "yes". If someone tells you they can't make it, they still get an invitation, and you still need to plan on them just in case (until they RSVP "no", of course).

missnc77 · January 2014

We're doing a destination wedding for most of our guests other than my family, so pretty much in the same boat. I work a lot in spreadsheets and set up a spreadsheet with all of our costs and then different attendance scenarios. We have a sweet spot, and if all our guests make it, we will have to spend more money than we want, but the most important thing is we can cover that more money if needed. Trust me, even if you think not everyone will come, you will stress yourself out in the meantime thinking, oh my god, what if they do? It's just not worth that unknown stress. So, if you can't afford to host or fit 300 people, then you probably need to suck it up and choose between people or venue.

For what it's worth - we also thought having the wedding closer to where I'm from rather than in the state most everyone lives now would mean less money because of attendance. Now that we have save the dates out and hotel rooms booked, it's probably all a wash.

artbyallie · January 2014

The thing with Save the Dates, though, is that you then must invite everyone who received one, and thus people may say initially that they can't come but end up making it work out after all.

OP, I'm interested to know how you got such a huge number of people, though. Let's see... assuming every family has 6 children and all grandparents are living, that's 8 grandparents, 20 aunts/uncles, 4 parents, 10 siblings, and 60 first cousins, which by my count still only comes to 102 people. Are one or both families Mormon or Quiverfull, perhaps?

wrigleyville · January 2014

artbyallie said:

The thing with Save the Dates, though, is that you then must invite everyone who received one, and thus people may say initially that they can't come but end up making it work out after all.

OP, I'm interested to know how you got such a huge number of people, though. Let's see... assuming every family has 6 children and all grandparents are living, that's 8 grandparents, 20 aunts/uncles, 4 parents, 10 siblings, and 60 first cousins, which by my count still only comes to 102 people. Are one or both families Mormon or Quiverfull, perhaps?

Don't forget she's inviting SOs for all of the cousins too (which is proper). Also, "first pick" friends bring it close to 300. (120-some "first pick" friends seems like a ton, but not in a judgy way... I'm just surprised.)

We had the same scenario. There are some big families out there, and in our case, both families are Catholic. My grandparents each have 10 siblings, and they all had 4-6 children. Then, they all had 2-3 kids, and so on. When I combined my family with my H's family and capped it at first cousins (plus SOs), we had close to 200 people as well, and that was before adding our closest friends. We quickly realized we were going to have to bring those circles in much, much tighter.

JCbride2015 · January 2014

PPs have great advice. I'll just add that although you must budget and plan for 100% attendance, you can and should negotiate with your venue about whether they will charge you if you have a swing of 150-300 people. For instance, what if their minimum is 200, but only 150 RSVP yes? Will the venue make you pay for 50 extra plates or can you use that money as a credit toward something else at the wedding?

For example, a good friend had a huge blowout wedding with about 350 in attendance. About half the guests were traveling from India though, and they ended up with about 50 fewer people below the venue minimum (huge venue obv). The venue let her parents use what they would have spent on those plates, to add a fireworks show at the end of the night. So they still had to pay the minimum amount, they just were able to negotiate to get something for that money instead of nothing.

Beachgirl624 · January 2014

We are planning a destination wedding and with the save the dates that we are sending out we are sending out a little card to be mailed back that they can check to say : Yes we might come, we would like more info on the area/hotels or no we will not be able to attend - I am sure it will be worded better, but essentially that is what it will say. Obviously people can change their mind - but I know for us as we start to look at caterers and things like that it is almost impossible trying to come up with numbers. We are hoping that with those cards we get a rough idea - we know that people will change their mind and we will have a more formal RSVP card with the invitations, but at least this little card a head of time gives us a rough count so when we speak to caterers and event people we have a better idea instead of just saying well we are inviting XX and only think XX will make it.

missnc77 · January 2014

I really don't think it's necessary to put your guests in that sort of awkard position to RSVP before the RSVP. I thought the whole point of sending the STD was to let people see travel and accomodation options? Not RSVP for more info. Sorry, but that's kind of weird. We just sent a normal STD. People who know they can't make it went ahead and let us know without us asking. We'll still send them an invite because rules or rules, but you don't really need to ask for responses.

hmg1985 · January 2014

Thanks everyone for the responses! It's a great help We are definitely still leaning towards having a DW in Florida, but will be considering local as well.

- Sorry if I was unclear, I will send an invitation to everyone that receives an STD (haha just looks funny to me writing that, good to know my maturity level hasn't changed since getting engaged!) regardless of initial "no"s. And if we do have a DW, I will state the location on the STD. I like the idea of putting a link to my wedding website on the STD, to find out info on the hotel(s), city, flights etc...

- About my guest count - My mother is one of 8 children, my father is one of 11. My Fi's mother is one of 5 children, and his stepfather (been in the family since FI was 3) is one of 12. His father is one of 4. We simply cannot invite some of these people and not the rest. Although large familes, we are very close. Once I start to add my first cousins and their spouses or sig others, the guest list gets HUGE. My family is all spreadout across Canada. So a local wedding would see a good portion of them making the drive...but flight costs to Florida from Toronto and other parts of Canada would be an instant no for alot of my family.

Already stressed out! When does the fun part start? Thanks everyone

AllyIdo · January 2014

Just be careful... we have only two NOs for our destination wedding in Las Vegas! That's like a 4% decline rate! Turns out more people than we had anticipated are in the mood for a weekend in Sin City!

msuprincess04 · January 2014

I did a lot of what PP said for our destination wedding, and it seems to be working out. I also made spreadsheets for different senarios based on attendance. One for fixed costs and one for variable costs at 70, 80, 90, and all 100 people. We sent STDs out a year in advance, and our invitations just came in the mail today. We have a pretty good ballpark that about 75 people are planning to go. Even those who said they can't make it will still get an invitation. And, in the case that I or some family member wins the lottery and pays for a vacation for all of our "nos", then we'll still be able to pay for them at the wedding.

To answer your questions, plan for 100% attendance which includes budgeting for that many and finding a venue for that many. Yes, put your venue, or at least the city/state, on the STDs so people can plan. I'm getting married in Mexico in May, so, yup, I've been there.

missmo14 · January 2014

@AllyIdo maybe its a Vegas thing.... we had a high acceptance rate too! And most of our guests are traveling internationally.

Destination weddings, especially with a lot of notice via STDs etc can yield a lot of guests - even the ones you think wouldnt/couldnt travel.

Guest List / Destination Wedding Help Please!

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