Getting a count for a "destination" wedding?

I'm assuming you live in FL, and that is why you are saying it is not a destination wedding? If 95% of your guests will be coming from IL, they are really going to need advance notice. I think you need to send out STD's, and then follow them up with formal invitations 6-8 weeks before the wedding. I'm not an expert on STD's (we're not doing them!), but I'm thinking you would send them out about 6 months before the wedding. Going to FL, a lot of people might want to plan a vacation around the wedding, and they would obviously need notice for that. Eager to hear what others think.

I would either send STD's or send your invitations a bit early. Your wedding is during spring break and flights can be both booked ahead and expensive.

Depending on where in Florida, flights and hotels can be expensive during Spring Break. I live in Florida, and even I can't deal with the spring breakers.

We chose to plan our wedding in my home state (DE), but we live in AZ, and especially DH had family all over the country and we both had a lot of friends scattered all over, as well. A very large portion of our guest list was OOT.

I can tell you what my response rate was, but the best thing I can tell you is that it's impossible to predict who will be able to make it and who won't. We definitely had some surprises both ways, and it's so important to remember that life happens and sometimes reasons for not being able to make that kind of trip is beyond anyone's control. We had two couples who had daughters get diagnosed with cancer who couldn't make it because they instead traveled to be there for their respective daughter's treatment, a friend who's pregnant wife got really sick and lost their baby at 19 weeks and had to take a lot of vacation time when she was in the hospital so even if they were feeling up for a wedding celebration a couple months later, they probably didn't have the vacation time to make the trip, and we also had a few friends give birth a month or so before our wedding and even though our wedding was kid-inclusive, they weren't up for going out yet, with or without their newborns. I could keep going. But, as promised, my numbers: we invited 165 and we had 75 actually come.

We did send out STDs, and that was helpful for many who decided to make the trip. We sent ours out 7 months in advance. Typical time frame for STDs is 6-8 months. I don't think sending them earlier would have greatly changed our final numbers. The same extraordinary circumstances still would have applied to several guests (all of those things happened much closer to our wedding date) and it truly was plenty of planning time for those that were able to make it.

You should send out STDs 6-9 months before the wedding. I'd also send invitations earlier, 10-12 weeks before.

I would definitely send save the dates around 8 mos or so. Invites I would send out 6-8 weeks prior but that depends on when you need your numbers for the venue. I am having a DW in FL. We have invited 75 people and expect that we will have ~65 come.

We did our dw in Florida in 3-18-17!!! (We live in Wisconsin and everyone was traveling from Wisconsin except the person who was marrying us who was flying from Tennessee). Anyways we did not have an issue with people getting flights that were super expensive. They just had to get tickets as soon as they could. The hotel we had blocked off almost a year in advance so we didn't have a problem with that either.

We sent out save the dates a year in advance. It has our wedding website on it that also had all the info in it! Then we sent out our wedding invites Jan 10th. We sent our invites for 42 people. Due to several medical issues that arose only 28 were able to come!

We loved our dw!!! Wouldn't change it in the world!!!

Having a wedding in a different state than your guests is going to lower your guest count but don't let that stop you from having it in Florida. The people you really want there will come.

Save the dates should be sent out typically 8 months before wedding. Invites 3 months for "destination" weddings...i know you live in Florida but your right to call it that due to 95% of guests coming from Illinois.

Definitely send out save the dates like 6-9 months in advance

We are having a DW and we are expecting 51 out of 250 invites. Going into i thought about 50-75 would attend so I was pretty on par with my guess

I'm having a destination wedding In Tennessee with most guests coming from Illinois or Michigan. We invited 150. We're going to have 85-90.

Having a DW in punta Cana. Sent my STDs 1 year in adv and put lots lots of info on our wedding website. Sending out invites 5-6mos in advance. We are 10 months to go and people are already asking to book and for their invites. Lol. I just tell them to go to the website.

We did a "destination" wedding in Cape May. We sent out Save the Dates with the information 8 months in advance (it was Valentine's Day so we did a cute thing with that). We invited 94 and had 70 attend.

We did a destination wedding at Christmas time and we had a pretty good turnout. We sent out STDs a year in advance and invites 8 weeks in advance. All travel info, including room blocks, was posted on our website. I think hotel blocks and travel information is very important.

We're having a DW in Charleston. We sent our STDs at the beginning of April. We followed up with a hotel block/general lodging email to everyone on our invite list (about 70) at the beginning of May regardless of whether or not they're coming so they can adequately prepare (hotel rooms in Charleston in Oct can be pricey!)

We'll be posting our hotel block info, activities, etc. on our website which is indicated on our invitations. Our invites are being sent out the first week of August and we're giving our guests 6 weeks to send it back. We definitely padded the RSVP date by 2 weeks to give us more time to track people down and confirm.

I think the people we expect have already verbally "confirmed" they are coming and have booked hotels but there are about 25% of our guest list that we truly have no idea if they'll be showing up.

Thanks everyone for the advice/input! Very helpful. So yes I'm definitely going to send out our STDs sooner than later and same with the invites. It's so tricky because we don't want to over invite (to where it gets expensive), but at the same we have a few friends we wouldn't mind having there that we may potentially have plenty of room for. We are very interested in the Four Seasons in Orlando, which happens to be on Disney World property. I'm thinking maybe (like some mentioned) some guests will see that as a chance to do a vacation. It's such a toss up for the guest count and that's so hard to work with! Lol