When compiling our invitations, I compiled our list of guests into a spreadsheet and assigned each a number for the back of the RSVP card. Fortunately, we didn't need to use the number to figure out where a card came from, but I did use the spreadsheet to keep track of the guest responses. It was then easy to send that list to both our mothers to let them know which guests on their ends needed a little reminder to send their response card in. After we started receiving a few cards, it made it easy to project what I thought the final number would be. We were doing some menu adjustments before all the cards rolled in, so it was nice to be able to have a good number to work with there.
So all that means we've finally got a final guest count number! I can stop saying "around 200 guests" or "maybe 215?" when talking to my vendors.
Grand total?
The Pyramid wedding will have 221 attendees!
We sent out 144 wedding invitations to a total of 289 friends and family members. Let's not even discuss that, and we'll just say that we were not immune to the guest list creep phenomenon. It was more like a guest list landslide. But I digress.
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| Basic Decline/Accept Chart |
I didn't have a fancy weighted calculator like Mrs. Filly, but everyone and their mother said that you should anticipate 80% acceptance. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't like taking standards when it comes to a personal situation. What if everyone was so impressed by the invitations and the idea of a weekend in downtown New Orleans that they would all accept? Sure, we could fit them all at the venue, but it might mean reworking the menu some to make the money available for them all. So, in the end, we fell just below that well-known number, but that includes a few courtesy invites that we had to send to some out-of-town family who we knew would not attend. If I were to take that into account, we would probably hit closer to 80. Go figure, we're normal!
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| Invited and attending guests based on their location. |
Most of our guests invited were local, but there were some pretty important friends and family that we were hoping could make the trip from out of town. A lot of people are traveling to enjoy a weekend in NOLA and our nuptials, but there were a few declines in the mix that we were pretty bummed about. I considered anything over an hour outside of New Orleans as out of town, and that totaled to 30% of our invited guest list and 23.5% of our final headcount. To put it another way, 58.4% of invited out of town guests are attending.
So let's take a look at some categories.
The categories that made the most sense for use were Bride and Grooms Families, Bride and Groom's Friends, Bridal Party, and Bride's and Groom's Parents' Friends. As you can see, the parent friend category on both sides were the biggest slices of the pie, followed by family, the bridal party (including dates), and our friends. So our parents know a lot of people! I know that the the group of "parent friends" can be a bit of a testy subject. For the most part, these weren't "Hey, come see my son/daughter get married, even though you don't know them!" type of invites - in both cases, these are family friends that have been around our whole lives. Cutting out these guests would have immediately gotten us to a much smaller, more intimate wedding, but these are people we want to celebrate with! They've supported us for years, know us both, and we'll be honored to have them at our wedding.
And here's a look at how many will be attending the wedding in those same categories.
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| The declines shown for the bridal party come from two members not bringing dates, fyi. |
This crazy color wheel was my way of showing both of those charts above at once. The darker color shows who is attending in each group, and the lighter color shows the declines. Overall, the acceptance rate was pretty even across the board (~85%), with the exception of Sphinx's family. He had quite a few out of town relatives who couldn't make it for several reasons, but they'll really be missed!
Whenever I would see these breakdowns, I would think "Wow! Those bees have it so together, with their hard and fast headcount number!" So I'm trying for something like that. Honestly, there are still a few unknowns up in the air. Some poor little RSVP cards never found their way back into our mailbox. For most of those that haven't, we've heard something from them. Because New Orleans weddings are cocktail style, the final headcount isn't as imperative. There won't be place settings and a seating chart, so if someone who hasn't returned a card or talked to Sphinx, Momma P, Sphinx Mom, or me in the last six weeks ends up attending, then it won't be the end of the world.
Still, I didn't address and put postage on those envelopes for nothing...
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| Hey Pac-man, did you eat the missing RSVP cards? |
Of these that haven't returned the card, there's probably only about four or so that we haven't heard a definite answer from, so I'm not too worried.
And that's it for this pie-chart explosion! My little engineering heart sure had fun putting these together, and I hope it gives you some insight into an expected number if you're having a similar shindig! Oh, and it means the wedding is really, really close now! It seems like everyone I know greets me with "Countdown is on..." or "It's getting close!" Stop reminding me! I have so much stuff to still do!
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