How many guests to expect
The number of people you invite is never the number who come. Between the two are guests who decline, guests who never answer, and guests who say yes and stay home. Here is how to get from one number to the other with less guessing.
Invited, answered, expected, present
It helps to think in four numbers. Invited is everyone who received the invitation. Answered is everyone who replied, yes or no. Expected is the total of the yes replies, counted in people, not in replies. Present is who actually walks through the door.
Your planning should rest on expected, adjusted with what you know about the guests who have not answered. The gap between expected and present is usually small for a wedding and larger for an open community event.
Count people, not replies
One reply often covers a whole household. A family of five that says yes is five meals, three of them perhaps for children. Ask for the number of adults and the number of children in each reply, and plan from those totals.
If a meal is served, children’s ages matter too. A toddler eats little and needs a high chair; a teenager eats like an adult. When it affects the menu, add a question to the reply form rather than guessing from the number of children.
On invitesyou, each reply carries the number of adults and children, and the responses page adds them up for you. It also shows which parts each household will attend. A guest list can also group people by household, which keeps a family together in your counts and at the welcome table.
Guests who do not answer
Some guests will not answer however clear the invitation is. Do not count them as no. A reminder a few days before the reply-by date usually brings a good share of them in. After the deadline, call the few who matter most, such as close family, and make a reasonable assumption for the rest.
What that assumption should be depends on the event and on your guests. For a wedding with a family list, many hosts assume that most people who stayed silent will not come. For a parish supper, people who never reply often turn up anyway. Your own past events are the best guide, which is why it is worth noting the numbers each time.
A worked example
Say a parish invites 120 households to its autumn supper. Three weeks later, 70 households have answered: 52 yes and 18 no. The 52 yes replies add up to 98 adults and 31 children. Fifty households have not answered.
Last year, about one household in five that never replied came anyway, with two people on average. Ten households, so about 20 more people. The kitchen plans for roughly 150 meals, and the room for the same number of seats. The welcome table keeps a list of the 50 silent households, so it is easy to add the ones who show up.
- Expected from replies: 98 adults and 31 children, 129 people.
- Allowance for silent households: about 20 people.
- Plan for: about 150, with a few extra places.
Setting a limit
If the room, the budget or the caterer sets a ceiling, decide before you send the invitation how you will stop at it. Say on the invitation that places are limited, so guests know an early answer matters. Watch the expected total on the responses page as replies come in, and when it reaches your ceiling, close replies; you can reopen them later if a few people cancel.
A ceiling matters most for open invitations shared by link, where the number of people who receive the invitation is unknown by nature.
After the event
Keep the four numbers: invited, answered, expected, present. If you used the check-in list on the day, present is already counted. Next time, you will be planning from your own figures rather than from a rule of thumb.
To start counting from the first reply, create your invitation and send it with a personal link for each guest.