We’re hoping to keep the head count to 105, per our arrangement with The Bungalow Club. Family is all included by default, but deciding who to invite and who to leave off among friends is a decidedly un-fun yet sadly necessary part of wedding planning. Initially our invite list consists of about 180 folks. I’d heard tell of creating a ‘likelihood to attend report’, in which you rate each guest’s likelihood to attend by assigning them a percentage, and then you average those percentages out by dividing by the number of invitees. When we tried, it said we can expect a 60% attendance rate, probably due to the large amount of out-of-town guests on our list. Hmmm. But judging from the amount of “no” RSVP’s we’ve been receiving, due to economic constraints and travel woes, we may need to invite more people, yo!
What’s disappointing us the most is that the majority of the “can’t make it”s are family who we’ll really miss on the big day. But I know they’d be there if they could, and there’s nothing we can do about it. So, we started a “stand-by list” of friends we’d love to have come, but for one reason or another didn’t make the initial “boarding pass list”. Not that we love them any less, but a contingency plan seems to be in order considering that if we fall under 105 guests, we still have to pay for them. Better to have seats filled than empty, right?
How did you evaluate your guest list? Were you surprised by the number of RSVP’s? How so?