Well I've been marrried for one week now and I must say it feels wonderful! The ceremony was beautiful and very emotional, even the weather behaved for the whole weekend with a burst of sunshine just as we came out of the church. BUT.....I think I need to have a rant (I need to get this off my chest cuz it's really bugging me) about the complete and utter lack of respect that some people have regarding actually turning up!!
We had about FIFTY no shows! Some didn't turn up for the meal, namely my husbands best friend, his wife & 4 kids, who were all on one table so when they didn't show it left 3 people on a table set for 9 (the table plan was a waste of time in the end)! Luckily the wedding co-ordinator at the hotel was cool, calm and collected and just sorted it. But the others were all supposed to be guests at the evening reception and the worse thing is most of them were saying they were coming right up until a few days before. I understand if people have children and the kids get ill or whatever but is it really too much trouble for others to just be honest and say they're not coming?! We reckon it cost us over a £1000 for those people not to be there, that's a lot of money when you're on a budget. But it's not just the money, we had decent size room to accommodate all those people and because they didn't show the room looked quite empty for the evening reception (and the dj was crap so no-one was dancing )
I know that all the guests that were there were the ones that mattered but I'm so angry at peoples lack of respect for the effort and thought that goes into planning a wedding! Grrrr, rant over!

I don't blame you for not catering for everyone, I wouldn't have either but it was part of a package and we paid extra for the people that went over the package amount. Unfortunately once we'd paid we couldn't change the numbers and to be fair we didn't know until the evening that people wouldn't turn up. It's not so bad with a buffet for the evening as there will always be some that will eat more than others but when you've paid for about 6 or 7 three course meals that don't get eaten it's very annoying.
I'm sure it will all go fine for you and wish you all the best for your big day. I wish I could have my ceremony all over again x

I know how you feel I have been up to our caterers and dropped the numbers by 20 as people have said last week oh we aren't coming we decided to go on holiday. Yesterday bil said oh we can't come ive got to go to Olympics. He is in army. So a few this week have said they aren't coming.
Like you said why can't they say from the start they won't be coming.
Lucky our room is not large I know even if only half come our room won't look to empty.
At least you had a lovely day and that you are enjoying being married.

thats so rude of them! id be broadcasting my feelings to them becaue i know i wouldnt be able to help myself!!! i intend to be brutal with my rsvps, if theyre not in on time then i am going to assume peeps arent coming n if they turn up more fool them because theyll have nowt to eat!!!!! mua.ha.haaaa xxx

We only had one no show at the wedding - and that was my aunty because she was ill and couldn't travel all the way to Gretna. She did let us know in advance though. We had a lot of people not show up for the evening reception back home. Some had said they were coming and didn't bother, and some just didn't RSVP so we didn't have a clue either way.

We catered in the evening for about 60 people - but only about that many turned up, and not all of them ate, so we ended up with a lot of food wasted. The catering was a wedding present from mil and fil which made me feel worse as they'd paid for it all and done all the catering as well.

I'm with lilmisschuckles, RSVPs are nessisary or they don't get to come! I can't believe people were that rude to you guys!

we had a few evening guests not show up for one reason or another. some had txt me during the day to say they couldnt make it!! (not that i got those till the next day!! being my wedding day my phone was left at the hotel!!!! lol)
I was abit gutted that they couldnt make it but had only catered for 75%
If it was day guests that hadnt showed up and with no explination I would be demanding they paid what I had spent on their meals. Thats just plain rude and totally unacceptable!!!!

That's outrageous! Bad enough for evening guests, but for a day guest who knows that you've spent a fair old amount of money per head, it's utterly disgraceful....

I would make sure they knew how much you had spent on them so that hopefully they will feel bad about it and offer you some class of compensation.

Glad you had a good wedding day though apart from that! Xx

That is so rude.
I have to admit it really really really winds me up if i organise something and people say theyre coming then dont show up!! so im going to go MAD if they do it on our wedding day! Id be on the verge of sending them the bill for their food and expenses that we had, had to pay out for!

Weve decided if our guests do not RSVP by the date thats it tough we'll just assume theyre not coming and wipe them off the list. Last thing i want to do before the big day is stress out over lack of rsvps. :)

i think its rude for day and evening guests... I dont understand why people do that. I went to a friends wedding yesterday and I may be mistaken but I thought she was inviting 100 to evening and there must have only been 80 at most. Naughty .