Wedding RSVPs for Hawaii Wedding
After teeth pulling, twisting arms, and nagging our nearest and dearest (just kidding, no twisting arms or nagging was involved; just six pulled teeth ;)) we have all our RSVPs! As it seems to be bee tradition, let’s talk numbers!
Mr. Eel and I were targeting a 200 person guest count and, factoring in the number of mainland invitees and potential decline rates, we invited a total of 228 people. The breakdown between Mr. Eel’s and my sides was pretty even (118 Ms. Eel vs. 113 Mr. Eel). We really didn’t plan it that way—it all just sort of worked out. As you can see from the chart below, I was more heavily weighted in the family department while Mr. Eel invited slightly less family and more friends. Again, not planned but just sort of worked out that way.
Of our 228 invitees, we had 176 accepts and 52 declines. Our decline rate of about 23% sounds to be pretty typical.

In the graph below, you’ll see that the highest number of declines came from Mr. Eel’s family at 35%. This was due to a couple of factors: 1. Mr. Eel had a higher number of mainland invitees. Since our wedding is in Hawaii, it’s an airplane (as opposed to car) ride away and just isn’t feasible for some people to attend. 2. Mr. Eel has a lot of elderly family members that won’t be able to make the drive to our wedding site.

So when you look at our guest breakdown by actual attendees for our wedding, you’ll see that ...