The Numbers Are In!

There was serious cause for celebration at chez Tartlet last week because our RSVP list is finally complete! Oh, memories *cue hazy flashback*: our Save-the-Dates were sent a year before the wedding. We mailed our invitations in February, and set our RSVP deadline a month before the wedding. Our guaranteed numbers are due 2 weeks before the wedding, which allowed us 2 weeks to hunt down and conquer any delinquent invitees. I'm a gal who appreciates data sets, so it's no surprise that I looked for statistics while I was in the throes of weighing how many guests to invite vs. how many to expect. Following in the footsteps of Miss Sloth, here's the statistical breakdown for our wedding:

Total guests invited: 86; 13 of which were +1s (we gave this option to those who were in long-term relationships or who would otherwise not know anyone else at the wedding)

No. of invitations mailed: 41

Out-of-town guests (over 1 h drive): 43
Local guests: 43

Accepted: 58 (67%)
Declined: 28 (33%)

Once we included Mr. Tartlet and myself, that brought our final count to a beautifully round crowd of 60--spot on to what we were hoping for! This happy ending had a good mix of triumphs and bumps along the way, though, so let's take a moment for an episode of:

Image via shareTV

Good Idea No. 1: Invisible ink. Heeding the wisdom of numerous other Bees, I took the time to write our guests' names on the back of each RSVP card. I purchased my "secret message writing" pens from Paper Source.

This was definitely worth the extra effort because I received a handful of RSVP cards that had a critical piece of information missing:

The above picture is actually a good lead-in to Bad Idea No. 1. Perhaps you've spotted it already?

Hmm. Who gets the chicken, and who gets the fish? Fail. Since couples will be seated next to one another, I made an educated guess based on gender and what I knew about the person to assign them a meal. With a 50% chance of getting it right I didn't want to call everyone up to verify their meal choices. If I had a time-turner, I would have changed the wording at the bottom to "kindly initial your meal preference."

Good Idea No. 2: Beating a dead horse about who was invited to the wedding. We wrote the guests' names on the outside:

On the inside via a personalized name tag in lieu of the traditional inner envelope:

And we also included the number of seats reserved in their honor on the RSVP card itself:

We didn't receive questions or complaints about who exactly was invited to the wedding, so I'd like to think this tactic was a success!

Bad Idea No. 2: Using dark colored RSVP envelopes.

Yes, they're oh-so-chocolatey and rich, but I failed to take into account that not everyone has a white ink pen handy. Some of our guests opted to put return address labels on the RSVP envelopes, but the vast majority just sent it back "as is." Luckily none of them got lost, but it was definitely an "oh crap" moment when I realized these could easily disappear into the abyss of USPS. All in all it was a really harrowing exciting learning process, from drafting a preliminary guest list to finally knowing who will be there to celebrate with us in just a couple of weeks.

Of the 58 "Yes" responses:

• Local invitees: 37 (64%)
• Out-of-town invitees: 21 (36%)

Out of the 28 "No" responses:

• Local invitees: 2 (7%)
• 1 - in a wedding the same weekend
• 1 - has a required conference to attend the same weekend
• Out-of-town invitees: 26 (93%)
• 2 - in school and had required classes
• 2 - health-related restrictions
• 3 - international and couldn't get the time off work
• 4 - teachers who couldn't get time off work (+2 children)
• 6 - budget restrictions
• 1 - didn't give a reason, but is a family member I haven't seen or spoken to in over 10 years (so not surprising)
• And the remaining 6 were +1 spots that didn't get taken

The only surprises we had were our two local friends who unfortunately had prior commitments that weekend. Thankfully they're still able to come to the welcoming dinner the night before the wedding, and they'll also be tearing it up with Mr. Tartlet at his bachelor party earlier in the week.

How did you fare in the RSVP game? Let's save other gals some nail biting and share any wisdom (or number crunching) that makes the process easier!