Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Tallying the RSVPs

Remember the Gazelle invitations?  If not, that’s okay.  Here are a few pictures to refresh your memory.IMGP3279IMGP3308I promised to come back and tell you why our RSVP date was so far in advance of our wedding…IMGP3311…an to break down the costs for you and to share some fun tidbits about our RSVPs.  Plus we can now chat about our RSVP stats!

It was a lot of fun checking the mail every day from the the moment our invitations went out, all the way to when our RSVPs were due.  A few guests left us a little message on the card exclaiming how much they are looking forward to our wedding.  A couple folks got out their markers and sent their RSVP back with a bit of flair.IMGP3552How many blank RSVPs did we receive?  Three.  When the first one arrived I gleefully exclaimed to Mr. Gazelle, “Get the black light pen!  We’ve got a blank one!!”  That black light pen totally paid off.  The only downfall was when one guest grabbed their roommate’s RSVP card, didn’t sign their name and sent it back.  It was awhile before we realized the mix up.

So why was our RSVP date so far in advance?  Because we had to make a full prepayment to our venue one month before the big day.  I wanted to have fairly firm numbers so that I could feel confident writing a cheque to our venue knowing that the number would be unlikely to change very much after the fact.

How did our numbers work out?

  • Total number of people invited: 74
  • Number accepted: 54
  • Number declined: 18
  • Number we are still waiting on: 2

The local versus the out of town equation:

  • Number of locals accepted: 13 (17.6%)
  • Number of locals declined: 0 (0%)
  • Number of OOT accepted: 41 (55.4%)
  • Number of OOT declined: 18 (24.3%)

Our farthest guest is 4000 km away in Kentucky, although Sarnia, ON (3900 km) and Dallas, TX (over 3800 km) are close contenders for farthest away.  Our closest guest is only 20 km away from our venue. 

Our invitations wound up costing $202.70 for 40 invitations ($5.07 each).  With postage we were around $280 ($7.00 each).

There we go, the final breakdown on the Gazelle invitations!  It is so hard to believe that we are getting married NEXT month.  Where has the time gone?

Did you calculate the stats on your RSVPs? Smile

3 comments:

Keith said...

Where are the graphs, charts, trends based on responses per date? I was hoping to see calculations of the travel distances involved, complete with mean, mode, average, and standard deviation calculations. Where are the probability calculations about how many people will have an attack of life and have to back out at the last second?

I hadn't known one was allowed to decorate an RSVP card. We didn't do invitations to our wedding. People come and they have all these expectations about being fed and entertained.

The word is domeasc Which is really close to domestic.

Meg said...

BAHAHAHA Keith's comment made me LOL! This is totally a race report of RSVPs. I want to hear about your training too! Are you seeing the new IM's in Canada? :)

And I CAN'T WAIT to see the dress! :D

Saying I do said...

LOL, I did not calculate the stats on my rsvp's but that's a very interesting idea! You are SUCH an engineer:) it's def. the type of thing my dad would have done (who is an engineer)