Feeling sad about low rsvp turnout

Your deadline is still a ways away. People tend to wait until the deadline to RSVP for weddings, pandemic or not. Once your deadline hits, reach out to the people who haven't responded to find out if they're coming or not. A lack of RSVP usually has more to do with laziness and procrastination rather than an intent to say no.

View Quoted Comment That’s a good thing to remember. Yesterday, we sent out our reminder email to everyone about the deadline because the caterer is on our butts about getting a final number. We’ve heard from 3 people so far.

Like the previously poster mentioned, there are still three more weeks until your deadline so there is still plenty of time for guests to RSVP. Unfortunately, a lot of guests wait until last minute or don't RSVP at all which means you will have to reach out to them when the deadline has passed.

View Quoted Comment When does the caterer need the final headcount? They should be giving you a deadline and leaving it at that. If they told you a date after May 1st and are bothering you now, inform them that you were told X date and they will have their number on X date.

Hi fellow covid bride!! You know what makes smaller weddings great? Each guest gets more quality time with the couple, everyone has a great seat and can see/hear the experience easily, you won’t be stretched trying to say hi to each guest and feeling guilty when you couldn’t get to all the tables. The best weddings I have gone to are the ones where I didn’t feel like a number. I think several small tables will make it feel more “full” if that’s possible in your plans.


For what it’s worth, we went from 280 (pre-covid and yikes that number was crazy!) to 162 invited and 104 came. Wouldn’t change it for the world 🌸 having your closest of the close is an amazing feeling that I didn’t expect! Hope this provides some relief ❤️❤️❤️

View Quoted Comment We are having our wedding at a hotel. Due to COVID, the hotel fired the entire staff that worked on our wedding. The hotel can’t do the food and beverage portion of the contract anymore so we had to hire a caterer. When the caterer did a walkthrough of the hotel last week, she said the hotel didn’t have enough china, flatware, and utensils. She is worried we won’t have the time/ability to rent these items if we wait too long. I told her I won’t have a headcount until May 1, but she feels it is imperative to order the rentals now.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for saying this 🧡

View Quoted Comment I really can't imagine that a month is not enough time to rent China and flatware for 80 people. If they are a professional caterer, they should know what they are doing. This is a standard timeline for literally any wedding.

View Quoted Comment That’s how I feel. I do appreciate the caterer taking initiative to ensure that the hotel is stocked with everything we will need, but I can’t help but feel like it it’s a little premature to force us to lock in any numbers at THIS moment.

I wouldn't worry until much closer to the deadline. Right now so much changes from day to day most guests are probably just waiting for a better sense of what the future will look like. Even during non-pandemic times its very common for the majority of guests to wait up until the deadline to RSVP.

I am so sorry and know how frustrating it is to chase people down for RSVPs. As PPs said, most people procrastinate on RSVPs, but I would think they'd have to somewhat know by now to make arrangements (flight, etc.) for a destination wedding. Many people lost their jobs this past year and/or had to get new ones and can't afford to travel or take time off work for a destination wedding.


On another note, I saw on another post that you are asking guests to be vaccinated. You said most of them are, but for those who aren't, if your wedding is in June, it takes close to 2 months to be fully vaccinated and a lot of people still haven't been able to get appointments. I'd be curious to know if those are many of the RSVPs you haven't received yet.
You still have several weeks to go for RSVPs to come in, and if your caterer has been in business long enough, they should know how to obtain extra place settings/utensils with still a months notice.

I think with destination weddings the marrying couple need to be mindful that there generally will be a lower turnout than if the wedding were local, mostly because they ordinarily require guests to take time off work and spend quite a bit of money just to get to the wedding itself.

Notwithstanding this, be mindful that not everyone will RSVP (many simply forget thinking they already have) so if you haven’t heard back from everyone by the cut off, chase up the latecomers.

I mean I feel like for a destination wedding you’ve already gotten 30 RSVPs and I feel like that’s pretty good. Covid has hit people in all different ways. So some of your guests may have either lost their jobs and are collecting unemployment and not sure if they need to find work etc.

View Quoted Comment

That's true. I will say that we've been in regular communication with our guests and most of them have actually been very successful during the pandemic, luckily, so I'm not quite sure that's the issue. However, I do hear you and we are very empathetic to people who are dealing with new circumstances. I think I'm struggling with the fact that we fought with our in-laws about the guest list on the first two dates of our wedding because there were TOO many people coming, and now I'm concerned we won't be able to hit the minimum now. Things change. I'm just hoping for the sake of our contracts, we hit our number so we don't get penalized.

You still have about 20 days to get some RSVPs rolling in! And even though people are getting vaccinated, it just means reduced symptoms, so people still are being cautious. At the end of the day, it’s about you two enjoying your day!!

You still have 3 whole weeks until the deadline and you’ve received almost 50% of your RSVPs.... so you’re fine. Also, it’s to be expected that a destination wedding during a pandemic will possibly lower your guest count.

I would love the hear how your wedding turned out. We just celebrated my son's wedding on New Year's Eve. It was a somewhat of a destination wedding (i.e., travel was more than 2 hours for almost all guests and hotels were necessary for all). They kept the guest list small (approx. 100 people), got approx 70 that accepted (most during the last week before the deadline or after). But later guests started dropping off. As wedding day approached the guest count was 60. The COVID 'scare' during the holidays didn't help. (I remember seeing cars lined up everywhere for testing). The bride sent an email out to everyone about 4 days prior to ask if anyone is sick, please stay home, they would understand. A few days right before the wedding we started receivng more regrets - some who tested positive, some who were exposed to people who tested positive, and one or two who just were sick. The final count came to about 45.

The bride and groom, and parents, were disappointed in the turn out. But we had a great time with the guests who did come, and to my knowledge, no one has gotten sick as a result. I think the bigger disappointment in our case was from family who declined and had nothing to do with COVID.

Like you, this was their 3rd time trying to get married - postponed once due to job changes/ moves and the 2nd time due to the COVID shut down.

The other disappointment that stemmed from this was how stressed it was for my son, his bride and for us and family of the bride. It was impossible to just relax and really enjoy the days leading up to the wedding as we worried about turn out.

Here's what I have learned from this experience: 1) destination weddings - expect at a 40% - 50% attendance rate; 2) Have the wedding over a holiday and that could impact attendance more; 3) Add in a pandemic - and you just never know. SO, make the most of the time you have with the friends and family who did make it, have a great time and they will too. Show your appreciation to the ones who do come; 4) Invite friends and family that are really important to the bride and groom. When guest list needs to remain limited, don't worry about inviting those you feel 'obligated to invite due to family or whatever - they will likely decline anyway; 5) Have a 2nd invite list - as guests decline, send this 2nd round of invites to those you had wanted to have come but perhaps didn't make the list due to obligations to invite family members.