How many extra "safety guests" did you invite?

Ive always heard you get 50% of the people u invite. So if you want 100 guests invite 200

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo loren!!!!

@Katie I would invite the people you want there and when you start getting declines, send out the remaining invitations to your B list.

It depends, the smaller your wedding is, the higher the percentage who will come (because the people you're inviting are all close friends, family etc). I would not invite anyone you really don't want there though, because they might come! FYI, we invited 155, 94 have accepted, 32 declined (no that doesn't add up, we are still waiting on some people to respond).

I have heard of people doing this, but have only seen it not work only once. I had a friend do this several years ago. None of her guests declined and all of her "safety guests" accepted as well. She ended up having to spend an additional $1,000 to cover the extra people. I mean, you can't go to the "safety guests" and say, "Never mind."

Learning from her, we have decided not to do this. We have decided to request RSVPs by Mid-October. This way we can contact stragglers and have a final count by Mid-November.

Awe lady! Your right thats only good for kids bday parties lol

I wouldn't count on declines. Out of 120, invited, I have 15 declines, but have heard of people having a very high % of declines and others having zero declines. Invite your 115-120, then send out more if you get nos (obviously b listers wouldn't get save the dates.) Or, if you don't want to do a B list and your venue and budget CAN support a few more if everyone comes, invite about 130 and hope for the best.

It is virtually guaranteed that if you send out more invitations than you can actually accommodate, 100% of your guests will RSVP yes (and indeed, beg to be allowed to invite dates).

I'd go with LadyCrystal's plan.

Never, ever ever, EVER invite more than you can comfortably afford and fit. Mrs S had a 100% RSVP acceptance rate. There's been a few other ladies that had 90% or higher acceptance rates. If you can only afford 120, only invite 120. If you over invite and they all come, you will be screwing yourself over either financially or socially with such a situation.

I have heard that there is a 20% to 30% "nay" response from out of town guests. So if your guest list consists of a lot of out of town guest I'd suggest inviting 25% over your desire guest count. So for 115 to 120 guests invite anywhere from 144 to 150 guests. But if your guests are local expect a 90%+ "yay" response. I hope that helps.

Thank you so much for the advice. Sounds like a B list is a great idea. I doubt we would have a lot of declines, but you never know. I just don't want money wasted on empty seats.

Most of Mrs S's guests were both out of town and international. Again, 100% acceptance rate. The location of your guests has a lot less to do with it than your guests. I happily traveled 3 states for my BFF's first wedding, I went to PR for my cousin's wedding, the distance wasn't even a consideration.

PLEASE, please please do not over-invite because you *think* OOT guests won't come.

Ditto what Kahlcara said. You just don't know what your % is going to be. If your list is small to begin with, you will probably have a higher % of people accept. Like Reenski said, you could end up with 100%-you just never know. If you are going to do anything, do a B list. That isn't a great thing always either because of the B listers find out that they were invited because other declined...well...how would you feel that were you.

The smaller your list, the higher the percentage.

Don't invite anyone you don't want to have there.

I see that most of my couples are within 10% of the number they told me when we met.

Our RSVP date was this past Wed. Out of 184 invited we have 154 accepted, 16 declined and I am chasing down the last 14 people. We originally wanted 135 people to show up. Had we gone any other route but the one that was we'll expect to pay for the 184 (excluding vendors) and if 184 people show up, we'll pay. So anything under that is gravy. I would suggest you not count on declines as others have said but those you get count then as a nice discount or surprise.

I would be careful about doing that because you never know what can happen.

I've heard 20%, but i do think it depends on the size of your wedding. I have 217 invited and i neat at least 17 to say no. so i need at least 8% to say no, and i'm confident that will happen. that said, i didnt WANT to do that. i wanted to only invite 200. drama prevented that. don't invite safety people. you can always invite extra people as more people decline.

1) DO NOT OVERINVITE. You can't assume that a certain percentage will decline. I repeat, do NOT overinvite!!

2) Do NOT B-list. If you cut down your guest list to 120 and 20 people decline, then 100 people will come to your wedding. Don't send out another 20 invitations. B-listing is rude.

Someone told us take your guest list, take off "grandma's bridge group", and then you'll have 80% of those people. Ours oddly is working out almost EXACTLY to that equation. BUT there are a lot of people that that doesn't happen to!

I dont think B-listing is rude. there are genuinely people that i want to invite but do not have space for. why is it better to then not invite them if i get the space? you dont have to TELL them they were b-listed. i plan on requiring rsvps a little earlier than ppl usually recommend so that i can chase late people. nobody would know unless you sent out an invitation 2 weeks before. and honestly, most people are understanding that space is limited and would be glad to attend if you were honest about it.

We invited 178 people for our 180 person capacity venue. We had 133 people show up. This is about a 25% decline rate. But we had quite a few people who were out of town.