- Blog
- Bios
- Boards
- Classifieds
- DIY
- Gallery
- Vendor Reviews
- Shop Weddingbee
Weddingbee Blog
Funny story. Once upon a time, we found out our venue could hold a maximum of 170 people. In our naivety, Mr. Funnel Cake and I decided to tell each parent they could invite 50 guests while we would both invite 30 friends. 50 + 50 + 30 + 30 = 160, allowing room for the priest, photographer(s) and of course ourselves. Aren’t we great at math?
(Source)
Mr. Funnel Cake told his mother she could only invite 50 40 guests and she was immediately very upset that she couldn’t invite the entire world to the wedding. I told Mama Funnel Cake we were asking the parents to invite 50 people each and she replied “That’s nice. I’m inviting more than that.”
Huh?
Mama Funnel Cake told us to let Mr. Funnel Cake invite whoever his family would want to, because with a journey from Switzerland or Brazil, few would make it anyway and they would appreciate the gesture of an invitation. Mama FC herself planned that not all of our family would come, so she would just invite whoever she thought should be included in the celebration. She told me to do the same with my friends without worrying about numbers.
Mr. Funnel Cake thought it was so weird to plan to have people not attend your wedding, but that’s obviously sort of how it goes. I suppose if we were covering the reception ourselves or reaaally wanted to have a small wedding, we would have been more choosy about guests, but in the end Mr. Funnel Cake ended up invited any person he thought could possibly want to come and I invited any people I would possibly want to see while visiting America. (Cos I’m not there all that often!)
Plus ones? Girlfriends? Kids? Sure! Why not? We ended up being really generous with the invitations. That’s how we ended up inviting over 300 people. Nearly double what our venue would hold.
Now before you get too worried, our RSVP deadline(s) have passed and the numbers are in! We mailed out the foreign invitations at the beginning of June and the American invitations at the beginning of August.
Yep. By our first deadline, we’d heard from a whopping five people out of our 165 non-US friends and family. 160 people didn’t bother writing, RSVPing on our website, calling, emailing, Skyping, SMSing, Facebooking or anything and we had to contact all of them. …and it’s not like RSVPing doesn’t exist in these countries. We RSVP for Swiss and Brazilian weddings when we get invites, so it’s not a foreign concept.
Even now after our American October 1st deadline has passed and we’ve contacted the out-of-country guests, we still haven’t heard from 73 of them. For awhile I became so accustomed to receiving “no” responses from the ones that did reply, that when Americans got their invites and started replying “yes” I was automatically marking them as “no”. I was happy to see some people will actually come to our wedding!
We are also assuming at this point that none of Mr. Funnel Cake’s unresponsive family or friends are actually going to come to Columbus, Ohio for a wedding, so I’ve marked them all as “No”s. This leaves us with:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So what does this mean? Well, sadly almost none of Mr. Funnel Cake’s family can make it. Absolutely none of his friends can make it. On the positive note, an overwhelmingly and surprisingly large amount of my family can come and obviously many friends as well. Yeah, great for me, but poor Mr. Funnel Cake.
I’ve told you in the past that Mr. Funnel Cake is a bit of a loner. You might not be surprised to learn that his Swiss family is not that close together and obviously for the Brazilians there was a big visa issue with coming to the States. We were a little sad more Swiss can’t come, but not too surprised. Mr. Funnel Cake chose not to tell his friends and family about the wedding date in 2010, which would have aided in travel plans a lot. We received many “It’s too far for the weekend” responses, along with people here in school unable to go on holiday, and many people with no holiday in 2011 left by October. Very understandable.
On my personal RSVPs I am probably most disappointed that my best guy friend cannot make it to the wedding from Singapore. I was gutted to hear that he has work responsibilities that mean he cannot fly around the world to be there with us, but I do understand. I will miss him on the day of, but it seems like we will have lots of family to celebrate with and I’m sure excited to see all the Americans flying, driving or coming from in town to the wedding!
Did any of your RSVP responses make you a bit sad?
I actually got my first “no” yesterday…I was like…what D:
That’s a lot of numbers! We have been working on the guest list forever now, and I picture the wedding with all of those people there. I get worried that none of them will come though 
Way to be optimistic, doe. Haha. But it does worry me.
It sounds like you have a really great group who RSVP’d!
Wow, those are intensely subdivided numbers!
If I redid my guest list again, I would have invited more of my hometown people. My husband’s family had to invite their entire town, but in the end, many of them did not come due to distance and work and if I had known that many were invited because of business associations, etc, I wouldn’t have been so frugal with my own friends! A little sad looking back.
My three nephews, niece and sister in law can’t make it. I knew it was a risk when I chose to get married 1300 miles from Michigan during the school year, but I’m still really bummed that they can’t be here. I understand, it just kinda sucks. My brother will be attending - and I think he’s kind of excited to have a fun weekend free of kid-wrangling. 
We got a less than stellar RSVP response, to the point that we will be paying for half a dozen or so people that don’t exist, since we had a 150 person minimum in our contract. FH’s family doesn’t want to travel two hours from Connecticut on a Saturday (huge disappointment) and my coworkers couldn’t be bothered (huge disappointment).
But the only couple RSVPs that really saddened me were the nos from a few friends that I’ve been out of touch with, but really would have liked to have there.
The good part: fewer favors, fewer centerpieces, fewer OOT boxes, fewer EVERYTHING to do.
We got more no’s than we expected which made us both really sad. Even some school friends backed out of being in the wedding party and last minute found out they cant come. Not an ideal situation. On a positive note, the people who are coming, we are very excited about seeing and spending time with. I guess sometimes i just feel like, it’s one day, you couldn’t take the time to come see us for one day. Oh well.
Yay for someone with more numbers in their RSVP post than mine! <3 Date Twin. I feel for Mr. FC on the low attendees on his side, Mr. Ticket has the same issue. He’s a bit of a loner as well, and his entire family lives on the East Coast while our wedding is on the West Coast. We invited his entire family and the only ones attending are his parents and brothers. Your out of USA wedding guests are epic for traveling. Yay for epic guests!
I felt really bad because I definitely had more guests than Mr. P, but as long as the most important people are there, everyone will be happy.
Wow! I keep getting aggravated that we’re not getting RSVPs. But get this — I sent our in-town invitations the 24th of September, and some people are just now getting them. Yeah, no, you read that right. IN-TOWN. It took two weeks for invitations with regular first-class postage and no funky business to get delivered… sometimes a couple of blocks away. *facepalm*
RSVP “no’s” were, in my opinion, one of the absolute WORST parts of wedding planning. But no matter how many people are there, on the day of it won’t matter to you at all.
We’re experiencing something similar. Our RSVP deadline is today actually and (of those that have actually responded) only a handful of the Sealman’s family members are going to be able to make the trip to California from NY. I agree with Pony though–hopefully the ones that are supposed to be there, will be there
We had the same problem. My husband’s family is all over the world (mostly in Germany though) and a lot of them couldn’t make it because of school, work, etc. His dad flew in from India, his uncle from Brazil and all three of his grandparents made it. But most of them didn’t come. Most of my mom’s family came, but only ONE cousin on my dad’s side came (some RSVPed yes and then didn’t show. Grr.)
We actually had about 10 people who RSVPed yes and then either didn’t show or didn’t have everyone in their party come. One family friend brought her sister and niece instead of her kids. Ummm. Yeah.
While we’re in a much different situation, I still hear you on parents wanting/telling you that you must invite all these people that you weren’t originally accounting for. A big difference is that Foxy and I are paying for everything ourselves, so I sort of feel like we have some pull but then again, not so much. Our number has blown up since our initial draft of the guest list and I”m honestly a bit worried, but everyone mentions how the “no” RSVP rate can often be much higher than expected. Thank you for posting your numbers though.. I’m such a dork for info like this!
@Miss Doe: don’t worry doe. All the people you need there will make it.
@bluewolverine: Yeah I ended up inviting way more people than I would have if Mr. FC were local as well. I’m really glad I could invite whoever I wanted. It was such a luxury!
@tracylesq: aw, we too had negative responses from friends we haven’t been in touch with lately. I mean, I’ve been living halfway around the world but I still would have liked to see them. But alas, they didn’t want to come.
@Miss Ticket: haha, Ticket I confess I copied your stats because you wrote your post right when I was starting mine! They are only longer because I added in the non-US portions. I would have never broken it down so well if it weren’t for you!
@CameraGirl87: Wow, it sounds like you had a good international turnout! (More extended family than Mr. FC!) I’m actually a little wary that there’s NO way all of my family that RSVPed will actually show up. 10 people sure is a lot to flake out!
I asked FMIL back in February for fiance’s family list (since he’s deployed). I sent her the master Excel sheet of guests to fill out addresses a few weeks back. She decided to invite 20 more people on a whim. Her logic is that 4-5 will attend. Really? Then WHY ARE WE INVITING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!?! Rage. Sorry.
Were you nervous at all inviting that many more than your venue can hold?
Most of the people we’re inviting are local, or at least within the state. I’ve been arguing with my mom because she wants to invite way more than we really want or can fit in our venue. But she insists that most people probably won’t come and it’ll all work out. My thoughts are..but ‘what if’?! I think we’ll limit the list at first and then send out another round of invites to other friends if it looks like there’s room.
Our venue fits 200 max (a bit uncomfortably at the tables) so we were hoping to keep it less than that for sure…maybe 150-175! What do you think we’d be safe inviting? We’re at 220 right now.
I had a few RSVP responses that made me a little sad, but I wasn’t surprised they couldn’t come, considering their schedules or how far away they lived. I think I had more “nos” and no replies at all that just made me angry when I kept hearing the stories behind them. A cousin saying she “doesn’t like weddings” when she’d probably only been to about 2 in her entire life when she was younger and another cousin who didn’t come because he “didn’t want to get cleaned up.” But in the end, when your wedding day is here, you’ll have a great time and appreciate all of the guests who did come and celebrate with you.
@sweetcV2B: some people say a 70% acceptance rate is fairly normal, but it all depends on your family and friends. How far away they are or how busy (or friendly/close) really plays a role in if they come or not.
RSVP math was the bane of my existence. Crunching the numbers is just annoying, and it seems like everyone’s experience is exactly the same in this sense.
Your RSVP’s look so complicated compared to mine lol, but still, it has and still is a struggle to actually collect rsvps, whats wrong with ppl!! Do they forget? I have a sad RSVP,my best friend from primary school/high school/university- basicly been together forever, cannot make it. It’s a long story and I understand why she cant make it, but I am very sad that she can’t come.
| Visit our sister sites | eHarmony Online Dating |
eHarmony Advice Dating Advice |
Project Wedding Wedding Songs |
JustMommies Pregnancy Calendar |
Mrs. Funnel Cake, Zürich, Switzerland/Columbus, Ohio Age and Occupation: 24, Visual Communication Designer Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Application Engineer Engagement Date: May 30, 2010 Wedding Date: October 2011 Venue: Catholic church followed by a botanical conservatory About Me: I'm an American designer who moved to Switzerland for love after a fairytale beginning at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I love travel, photography, museums, learning German so I can speak with my mother-in-law, cooking (eating), cuddling, and I'm not afraid to try something new even if it terrifies me. My Swiss/Brazilian man and I are both down to earth people planning a traditional Catholic wedding in my hometown with some quirky cultural exceptions to reflect our different backgrounds. We look forward to celebrating with friends and family from all over the world in a classic, sophisticated fusion of heritage and love.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
Latest Gallery Pics