How to get head counts for destination wedding in order to book room blocks

Ask for a courtesy block and give the hotel information to your guests so they can take care of their own travel arrangements. Give them a deadline to book the hotel, while also being aware that no one can commit to specific plans before 4 weeks before the wedding.

I completely understand the frustration with this situation – we are also planning a destination wedding, and I have a ginormous family while FH has a very small one. It’s super hard planning for a destination wedding as it is, let alone one that can have such a huge variable when it comes to the amount of guests. Unfortunately, there is just no way to foretell how many people will actually attend. We found that everyone is super excited and eager to say they will attend when you first tell them you are having a destination wedding. However, as the time gets closer and plans change, the financial logistics set in, etc. a lot of people will change their minds/end up not being able to attend. Originally, we had thought of taking a poll of our guests, but after seeing a couple we know send out a request for people to RSVP with their save the dates a year out, we realized how ineffective something like that really is, because people were calling and texting them like crazy letting them know they couldn’t plan that far in advance and they would let them know closer to the date of the wedding. We also had experience with a couple who sent out invitations super early requesting people to RSVP 6 months out, and they also had to field tons of phone calls. That couple insisted everyone had to RSVP by that deadline, so a lot of people just said yes, but then backed out the weeks and months leading up to the wedding. In the end, we learned that having a destination wedding is just more complicated and there are more unknown variables than planning a traditional local wedding, and it’s just something you will have to accept if you decide on a DW. My advice would be to find a place that has multiple options available- A beautiful smaller space if you have a high decline rate, And a large ballroom, conference room, etc. in case you end up having a lot of people show up. And definitely have a very flexible mindset to accommodate changes- because we have found that there will be a ton of them! LOL
If you are a super organized person that loves to plan (like I am) it can be incredibly challenging! But, in the end, we are following our vision for our big day, and I think it is all worth it! Just be prepared for lots of changes, and keep reminding yourself that destination weddings are a blast, and it is going to be such an amazing experience! 💕

That's one of the issues with planning a destination wedding. There's really no way to tell until the time of the wedding approaches. People can find their own accommodation anyway at nearby hotels etc. There's a lots of hotels in Cancun.

Another suggestion would be to contact a travel engine. They can sometimes work magic that us common folk can’t. Maybe they can find a resort for you that will be flexible with the room block

If you're having a destination wedding because you truly want one, that's awesome. If you're having one so you can invite a ton of people on the assumption they won't come, but you'll get credit for inviting them, I think you are opening yourselves up to a ton of logistical and potentially other headaches (as pps have mentioned). Unless you reach out to each invitee individually and talk them through the details, including timing, location, and estimated cost, and ask them if they realistically think they'll attend, I don't think you're really going to have any idea how many people will come until very late in the planning. If you truly want a smaller wedding, or can only comfortably afford a lower guest count, then I'd own that and plan for that wedding whether it's a destination or local. Unless your family and friends are in a very high income/net worth socio-economic group, I think $3500 a couple for a destination wedding is a lot -- even if the B&G were super close family or friends, we'd really need to think about whether we wanted to make that kind of commitment. I'd also think about the reasonableness of the social currency you're hoping the "they were so kind to invite us, even though we can't attend" will provide. For another perspective, some people might think "$3500 to attend a wedding in the middle of what looks like a significant recession? How out of touch are they????" In the best of circumstances, destination weddings carry all kinds of baggage, and there are many polls that suggest the vast majority of guests don't care for them. That said, it's always the B&G's choice what kind of wedding they want, but it's important to consider how potential guests might feel about it. If you really want to have a wedding with your nearest and dearest, just do it. Good luck!

That’s tough. I would narrow down your guest list as much as possible so you can get to a closer number for room blocks.
Destinations have a much higher decline rate. Factor in your estimate of $3500 per couple and Covid, it may be low.
I estimate about 30% of the guests we invited from other states and have to travel here to NJ, RSVP’d Yes.

View Quoted Comment I can definitely see how that can come off. The truth I'd I've always wanted a destination wedding. I never saw myself having the big white wedding at home, and wanted my wedding to be more of a vacation with family and friends than a traditional day. I should also mention that I live 9 hours away from my closest family and many live in another country so flying, hotel rooms, food/transport cost would exist regardless of where I had it. I would prefer to have the wedding somewhere beautiful and tropical than Kentucky where I currently reside.

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And, that's awesome and makes perfect sense. Only you & your fiancé know your potential 300 guests well enough to decide if you truly WANT to invite all those people or if you can narrow the list to those you are closest to and then hope they can attend. If so, then go with that smaller guest list, and if people not included ask you/your parents/whomever about the wedding, try to ensure the standard reply is: "it's going to be a relatively small destination wedding" and leave it at that. I say that as someone who both my husband and I come from HUGE families -- our daughter is one of 28 first-cousins between our two immediate families. If you factor in all the second- and third-cousins, her "fairly close" relatives easily number in the 100s; just because you have a lot of family, they don't all have to be invited. (FWIW A total of 8 cousins, who our daughter is actually close to, were invited to her wedding.) As others have said, there is typically a much higher decline rate for destination weddings than for local weddings. If you haven't yet, you might want to talk through your plans/options with your highest priority guests -- the people you can't imagine not having in attendance -- and if they are on board, then go with it. Good luck figuring everything out!

I totally understand what you're going through as I had a similar experience when we started planning our destination wedding. I agree with a PP about recommending finding a venue that will offer you plenty of options so that you can adjust as necessary depending on your final headcount, but at some point it just becomes a guessing game that you guys will have to kind of accept :/ Before we finalized the destination wedding idea, we reached our to our closest family and friends to gauge their interest level - we wanted to know if our "non-negotiables" were interested / able to do something like this. Once we got that confirmation, we went through our invite list of about 100 guests and identified how likely we thought each person was to attend. At that point, we expected to have somewhere between 30-50 of those people attend. We sent our STDs about a year in advance and we did ask our guests to provide a preliminary RSVP, citing that we know things will change and that this doesn't lock them into anything, but that it would be helpful for our planning process because we needed to know this for assisting with accommodations. This was a mixed bag of both being helpful and not super helpful - it was instrumental with accommodations because our venue had a limited number of rooms for guests to stay at, and we wanted to gauge who would be interested in staying at our venue - from this list, we started reaching out in order of closest family and outward to get them reserved. Where this was less helpful, however, was that there were quite a few people who expressed that they intend on coming. It go to be that we though we'd have somewhere between 65-75 guests attend. Of course, like another person mentioned, a lot of people are eager early on but as it gets closer and people begin to really look into the logistics of the travel, they start to drop like flies. Our wedding is early September this year, and we sent our invitations out in mid-March with a June 1 RSVP deadline - we did all of this intentionally pushed up because (1) if you're planning to fly to Europe, you should know well in advance and I wanted to encourage our guests to start planning/booking early so they can find better rates and (2) there are a number of logistical constraints with a destination wedding and we needed to get a close to final headcount as soon as possible because I have to have some things done and delivered locally to carry with me to our destination. We currently have 50 people confirmed to attend, so we really weren't far off in our initial estimate.

All this to say that yes, planning a destination wedding is logistically challenging and you're just going to have to make a lot of guesses. You know your guests best and can probably make a pretty educated guess on how likely they'd be to attend. For anyone really close, I'd float the idea by them and ask for their genuine interest level and whether they feel it'd be practical for them to partake - make it clear that you won't be hurt by the answer and knowing how likely it really is for them will help you in your planning.