rsvp declines - anyone else annoyed?

THIS. We have several weddings within 6 weeks of ours and one of us is in each of them, so any others that pop up we're going to have to really consider but likely decline, especially if it requires travel. We could normally afford it but we've got too much going on. Don't take things personally because you may not have the full picture for someone.

I had another situation like this a few years back, three of my good friends from college were all getting married within a few months of each other, one i was the maid of honor and the other two were on back to back weekends. I had to decline one, and said yes to the one that was more affordable for me.

If you're really receiving a lot of unexpected declines, I'm sorry for the disappointment. If you're actually disappointed about not having received as many replies as you were expecting right away, they'll continue to trickle in. We only gave people about 2.5 weeks to rsvp and while we got a lot of replies right away, we still had to track down responses from a large portion (like a third) of our guest list. Even the replies we had to follow up on mostly ended up being yeses. Many people were excited to come, but had lost track of or forgotten to mail their rsvp cards.

Aww I'm so sorry you feel this way! It may feel like they are rejecting you, but one huge thing to take away from this is due to COVID. Cases seem to be rising so I'm sure some guests feel a certain way about this. And if they decline more money for you to spend in other areas if you want! For example, it can go towards more stuff towards the wedding or even your honeymoon!

Any "destination" type wedding (we have a 50/50 split between in town and out of town guests) has a larger % decline rate. We are right at 30% decline.

Don't take it personally, people have things going on regardless of if you postponed and they had the date for 2 years. Just celebrate the day with those who can make it

I don't think you get "dibbs" to someone attending just because your date was picked first. We are invited to a wedding that got postponed 3 times. We could make the first 2 dates no problem, planned on them both and everything. The date they've now chosen is in the busiest month we have this year, and there's a very good chance we can't make it, possibly for another wedding that I've been asked to be in. It has nothing to do with the fact that we don't want to be there for them or that they're less important, it's just that things happen. We still plan on being their friends and have already given them a gift and will send a card with people we know who are going. Whether someone can make your wedding or not isn't that deep and don't "show who your true friends are."

We experienced this too and it was SOOO irritating. We probably had to reach out to a third of our guest list the day before the RSVP deadline (which was less than 4 weeks before our wedding) to remind them that it was coming up and that was the point at which most were like "oh I can't make it, sorry I forgot to let you know" which to me is just disrespectful. Very few guests were actually on the fence about whether or not they could come at that point, most just didn't bother to actually RSVP. We did have a couple guests who RSVP'd late but were trying to figure out child care or other understandable factors, and they were in communication with us the whole time and didn't just leave us hanging.

Our wedding was originally May 2020 but we had our celebration this June and we ended up with about a 50% accept rate, but only after we extended invitations to a larger group of people because we got so many declines. We originally intended to have a 60-80 person wedding, but we ended up landing at just 47 guests after extending our invites to 90. Covid had a significant impact on our accepts/declines, as we had a number of guests who had RSVP'd yes or our May 2020 wedding but couldn't come to our June 2021 one. We did require Covid vaccinations which resulted in probably a dozen declines from those who wouldn't get vaccinated, but we also had other guests who ONLY felt safe enough to come because they knew everyone would be vaccinated. We had a handful of guests who would have needed to fly to our wedding and none of them came and two couples had conflicts due to other weddings that had also been rescheduled due to Covid. We also had some people who declined with no real reason (or a really bad reason) and that felt pretty awful. Because our wedding was so small to begin with, we only invited people we were close to and therefore I thought not only were they a priority to US but we were also a priority to THEM, which turned out not to be the case. Clearly many of those relationships were more one sided than I realized.

If anything, it definitely makes me know to NOT be one of those people stressing a couple out and to be sure to RSVP as soon as I am certain of my answer. If you've send a STD in advance, I believe most people without kids do know whether or not they are going to go to your wedding by the time the invite arrives (assuming you send it about 2 months out, as per normal timeframe), so I never understand why so many take so long to respond.

My wedding is in December. I am going to send out save the dates in about 2 weeks and then Invitations/RSVPs a month to a month and a half later. My venue is extremely close to both families, so literally you will just need the gas to travel maybe an hour to us and back home. I am not too concerned about people declining. If they do, though, I may take it slightly personally. But, remember, there are always weddings, baby showers, graduations etc. that people will want you to celebrate (and bring gifts) for them. I keep things like this in mind (I'm slightly vindictive). So, if you choose not to support my day, I most definitely won't support yours. For, the people who gave you good reasons why they couldn't come; you can excuse them. But, the others will surely send you an invite for something in the future and when they do, give them what they gave you. I've followed this practice for a very long time. Family members that showed up for my graduation from college or my surprise bday party or anything else always got/get better gifts on special occasions than those who don't. The money that you'll save feeding them at your reception and celebrating with them on their special occasions, alone, will put you in a much better (almost cheerful) mood!!!