Welcome party count

Depends on a lot of factors. How far out of town (driving vs plane), how close you are to the guests and covid.
We invited 250 and were at 175 for our initial wedding- our postponed date we had 60ish attend

Our welcome party was informal so we didn’t do invites or guest count ...but we tried to suss out who was traveling in early and we guessed we’d have like 30-40 people cycling through as the night went on. Oh man were we wrong. Sooooo many people ended up getting in early, and even people traveling a little later came directly to the bar when they got in. I’d guess 75-85% of the out of towners showed up 😱...it was a very well attended event !!

I should specify our welcome party was on a Friday night toward the end of summer and the large majority of our traveling guests were from a 4 hour drive away. I think many people ended up just leaving work early (or had summer Fridays) and last minute decided to try to beat traffic. In our case only a small handful of travelers were arriving via scheduled transportation (planes, trains, etc) so there was a lot of uncertainty and guesswork for us as far as figuring out when people would actually be arriving in the area!

We invited around 130 to our welcome party (only those who were traveling via plane, close family, and in the wedding party). We had I believe around 90 come. Ours was held on a Thursday night (wedding was Saturday night) and some guests didn’t come into town until Friday.

View Quoted Comment Well that is good!! I’m glad folks went! We’re definitely going to require and RSVP for it so we have the right amount of food

View Quoted Comment About a 6 hour drive for most

We’re not doing a typical “welcome” party. Our rehearsal dinner is going to accommodate those out of town guests. Planning on a Thursday night rehearsal dinner & our wedding is on Saturday. Our guest count is 90 & we plan on 30 for the rehearsal dinner. B

Daughter combined the Thursday night rehearsal dinner with a welcome party for out-of-town guests. 101/127 of the invited attended the Saturday night wedding and 45/55 invited attended the Thursday night dinner. Some of the dinner declines were people who declined the wedding (mostly elderly & international relatives) and people who were attending the wedding but weren't flying in till Friday or even Saturday morning.

Note: not all wedding guests were invited to the dinner; she had two separate invitations -- one for the wedding & a smaller one for the dinner -- only those invited to both received both in their invitation envelope. Both RSVPs were on her Knot website (which worked great for recording the responses for both events, meal choices, etc.).

We invited out of town guests to the rehearsal dinner, and all of them came. We had a Saturday evening wedding and a Friday night rehearsal with about 40 people total (wedding was 115 people). Those who flew in chose to do so Friday morning or Thursday night.

115 invites is small, oh my?!

View Quoted Comment Considering most weddings I’ve been to have had 200+, yes!