How many “regrets”?

We started off with a list of just over 300, venue only holds 250 and that's pushing it...

Sent off the first round of invitations and due to majority of my family being from out of the city we got back about 80 no's (30%ish). Then we sent out the rest of the invitations out as we then had room (50ish) and got back about 30 no's (60%ish).

Then at the wedding itself we had a bunch of last minute cancelations and no shows... our total amount of people there was closer to 185....

Total % of no's = 61%....

I think it depends on the family and how close they physically are to the location of the wedding - but if I was you I would send out for all 120.

I had heard from every single bride that there were people who had rsvp’d yes and didn’t come. Every. Single. Bride. I didn’t think that would happen to me-and it did! 14 people didn’t show up.
We invited 150 people and had 85 yeses. Now, we invited our family that we don’t get along with (his sisters and their families, a few of my aunts and uncles) so we were expecting about 50 no’s— the other no’s were my friends because I moved provinces a few years ago. So, our percentage was higher than most.

View quoted message Oh there were zero demands met on ours. We do have a b-list but with only 30 guests, there isn’t much room for absences.

It depends on your guests honestly. I heard a lot of people saying 10-20% decline but so far, everyone who has RSVP'd has said yes and people were asking if they could bring other people so it really depends.

We're planning on inviting around 75 people so I hope our numbers don't dip too much lower than that.


My fiance's family has lived away from our home province for more than a decade so I don't need to worry about his parents inviting people. All their friends are their neighbors in Wisconsin. So far my mom hasn't had any additions (with the exception of mentioning a bridal shower involving the "ladies from church" who I haven't seen since I was 17 but that's not the wedding!) But I would be comfortable with most of her side of the family coming with the exception of a few cousins I don't see anymore.

Our venue could hold 140, and I think we invited 137 with the hope to get down to 120.

After the regrets came in, we were able to invite some more people that were important to us that we weren't able to include initially. I think that got us to 119?

Three days before the wedding, my husband's aunt and uncle told us they couldn't come now (??), but it was too late to adjust the # of meals we ordered.

Day of the wedding, 4 members of my family were no-shows.

View quoted message 100 is just such a good number, I don’t really know why 120 seems crazy to me but 100 seems good. Aesthetically and subconsciously - it works.


Also our floorplan will have 14 tables. They can be 6-8 people. So I’ve made some rudimentary lists and with 100 it was so much easier ( some had 6 some had 8) but with 120 I have to utilize all 14 to the max and it got weird with seating certain couples.
I KNOW the final layout won’t be exactly as I planned it but it’s not making me excited for that part when it does arise! LOL

View quoted message We are a Saturday - but a long weekend Saturday. So maybe that will influence things too! 158 to 108 seems kinda wild.


When I look at our list I can only really see 4 who I have a feeling will rsvp no ( for various reasons). But of course you never know!

We are inviting up to 120 people (our venue max) with the hopes of a guest list of 100. So far we are at 104 (106 including FH & I) but I wanted to leave a little wiggle room for VIP's potential plus ones (since its still 10 months away). Just sending out Save the Dates now so not sure yet on how it is actually going to look like. Sending out the invites in the spring!

Our guest list is mostly (my) family, since I just happen to have 5 aunts and uncles on both sides with cousins that I am all close with. Luckily FH just has 1 uncle and 2 cousins he rarely sees. But my family takes up 70% of the list, most of them are out of town and some with little children (who are not invited) so I am suspecting a portion of them to RSVP no and that is honestly ok! We have a B list of additional friends to invite once we have our "NO"s.

Since we are paying for it all, we have no hard input on the invite list and in fact have had to say no to a few suggestions from people. We are not following the traditional parents get to invite their friends rule, and we are not extending family invites past first cousins. Still unsure how I am going to treat significant others at this point but we have that wiggle room!

I am totally with you on 100 feeling like a good round number. 100 place cards, 100 favors etc but we are prepared to pay for the 120 if it comes down to it.

I think the 10% is a guideline just for people to plan for.

We invited 158 I believe. It was all family. We left it at people that we see quite often as my Husband has a lot of relatives that in 6 years of us being together I have never met once, so they were off the list.

At the time that I gave the numbers to my venue we had 108 including us.

We then had 7 people not show up, but yet they told us they were coming.

It really depends on who you are inviting and where they are coming from. All of our family are within a 30 - 1 hour drive of the venue. Plus look at the day of the week as well. We had our wedding on a Friday and I guess some people weren't too fond of that, but showed up anyways? Some people may have issues!

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Fair enough! For us, if we allowed all kids, we would've had 30 extra on top of our 145 already, so around 175... yeah no! Those kids also are all under 10.

View quoted message Oh for sure! Stand your ground on that one. B-list those you’d really like to invite for if you get some regrets?


We are super lucky that both sides of our families didn’t have a lot of “demands” in terms of the guest list.

View quoted message Yay! I know it’s so weird its like you almost want to say “don’t worry I’m 100 percent not offended if you don’t come LOL”


We have about 6 guests who are “family friends” request by our parents to invite. None of them come with kids which is great and all 3 couples we regularly see. Guest lists are so WEIRD!

View quoted message Very interesting!
Except for my siblings, almost none of our guests have kids younger than 14. We’ve included those kids as part of the 120 anyway.

Past bride here!

The 10% is definitely an estimate, the average being 15% that send regrets.

Me personally, we had 22% send regrets. A lot of it had to do with the majority of our guest list being from out-of-town, so some guests couldn't afford the travel.

We invited 145 people (including us in total numbers) and 115 responded yes, which was closer to my ideal number of 120. 30 said no. We had mostly out-of-towners and family on our list and some of the no RSVPs came from out-of-town family - most who don't attend any other family events so they were a likely no. We also limited kids on our list, so some parents who weren't comfortable being away from their kids RSVP'd no as well.

It's hard to see how many people will actually say yes or no until you actually send out the invitations and get responses, but from my experience, we had more no's than I originally expected.

Omg I feel you on this! I wanted between 100-110 people and we ended up with about 125. I'm hoping about 15-20 of them send regrets, since my MIL invited wayyyyyy more people than we had expected her to need.

There’s a few people we wish we could invite but we maxes out and we can’t afford a larger venue. I know too that if we accepted money/upgraded, we’d get more opinions on who should be invited and I think I’d lose it lol