By The Numbers (Guests)

(Source)

In the beginning, E and I set out to have a relatively small personal wedding. As can be expected when other people are footing the bill, this did not happen. Instead, between family invites we don't know and the anonymous plus ones E and I afforded to our guests (I mean really, who want's to show up to a wedding where they might not know anyone but the busy bride and groom?) we invited 260 people (263 with our awesome photographers and DJ).

However, when you look at the big picture, this number is hugely inflated since many people aren't bringing guests and, as you might expect, if we don't know who their plus one would be they probably don't care enough to come to the wedding. Thus, I decided to purge our online guest list of random anonymous plus ones to determine how many people we reaaaally invited to the wedding and ended up with 240, a number only slightly more manageable than 260. Still, were we using a venue or caterer that charged 100 per head like most do in Los Angeles (we're not!), those 20 potential guests would have run us $2000. That is some strong motivation there to keep your guest list small and looking at it now I can see why people choose to invite their guests stag.

Having that many people on our guest list has also meant that our February 14th RSVP deadline was little more than a pipe dream. I think we had maybe 60? 80? people who actually RSVPd by that deadline and everyone else had to be bugged via phone/email/text/carrier pigeon. We had one guest send in their two person RSVP card with three people AND request the most expensive adult meal for their 11 year old. We also got the customary blank RSVP card with an acceptance for two guests and no names. We still don' know who sent it. There were also 2 or 3 cards that came back with not only the RSVP card but also the hotel accommodation card. I'm not sure how this happened since they were in two separate pockets in the invitation.

So, I am finally happy to report that as of 18 days before our wedding we now know that 122 people will be attending our wedding. Yay! More than we originally planned for but it's not 200 and I can finally send the numbers to the caterer. Mission accomplished!

Now I just need to print up the Rehearsal dinner and Farewell brunch invitations and send them out. This would be a quick and easy task but we someone seem to have misplaced the actual invitation cards. Once that's done, I get to start the RSVP harassment all over again!