More Declines than we expected...vent

So yesterday was our RSVP deadline and we have gotten quite a few declines that we weren't expecting. It makes me sad because we had to cut a few people from the guest list who we really wanted to have at the wedding, because we could only afford to invite X number of people. Now I am worried we will have to upgrade our package to meet our minimum. I would have rather had these guests than extra food or bar time. However it was important at the time when we made our guest lists that we didn't go over budget, and costs were just so overwhelming. So we cut our lists. I wouldn't have been surprised if we had a 10-20% decline rate, but we are looking at a 35% decline rate, possibly higher

We have a few outstanding RSVP's but most of these are for people we kind of anticipated a "no" response when we sent them out. I'm just disappointed some people can't make it (totally understand why some of them can't come, just sad nonetheless and worried our reception is going to look sad in such a big hall).

I suppose I can at least be glad that we didn't go over budget on the reception - I had a coworker who counted on that 10-20% decline rate and ended up with 5%. She was freaking out over costs and there wasn't enough space in her venue to hold everyone. I vowed never to invite more people than I could comfortably afford to host...but I guess I never expected to have the opposite problem