There Ain't No Party Like a Pie Chart Party (Waterfall RSVP Breakdown)

One of my favourite posts to read have always been about invitation breakdowns. I always found them so entertaining and informative! So, I'm paying it forward. Without further ado, I give thee The Waterfall Invitation Breakdown! (I hope you read that last part in an ominous voice)

 

If you recall, early on in the planning process, we butted heads with my parents about the guest list, because Mr. Waterfall and I wanted to keep things intimate while they basically wanted to invite the whole world. Honestly, the guest list was the bane of my existence for the last two years of my life. It created so much drama, and I just wanted to be done with it. There was a lot of compromising and negotiating, but also many a tantrum thrown. Hive, it's never easy accepting money from someone, and trust me, there are always strings attached. Any time I refused to invite someone that they wanted, my parents pulled out the money card. It was awful, and to be fair, I didn't really notice the extra people we invited to appease them, since I spent most of my time surrounded by the people who mattered to me, so in hindsight, I should have saved myself the headaches.

  

Before we go on, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, we used a B-list. You see, we had a minimum of 150 people at our venue that we HAD to meet, but also didn't want to end up over-inviting and having to pay for 250 people, so we did rolling invites (basically a B and C list). I know the etiquette police are coming to get me, but it just made the most sense. We knew we had a lot of courtesy invites that needed to be sent out to people from out of town that probably wouldn't be able make it, but you never know! So, we sent those invites out first, and would send out our local invites as the no's started trickling in. This way, nobody got offended and we were able to keep our numbers manageable.

 

Out of 233 invites sent, 159 were mine, 63 were Mr. Waterfall's and 11 were neutral (such as mutual friends and vendors). The initial breakdown looked like this:

 

This is a more detailed breakdown of who's who. As you can see, a large part of my list were family friends, whereas Mr. W had many friends, but no family friends.

I know the list looks super one-sided, don't worry, we knew a lot of my people would not be able to make it, whereas Mr. W's list was all local, this is how our final numbers broke down :

 

When all was said and done, we invited 233 people, and ended up with 150 people exactly, a 64% attendance rate. As you can see, most of the negative RSVP's came from my side of the guest list, so things evened out in the end, though I still had a few more guests than Mr. W.

 

Since a large portion of our list was international, with guests coming from the States, Cuba and even Europe, we were expecting a somewhat higher decline rate than the industry standard of 20%, but we actually had quite a few surprising no's that were really disheartening. Many people who had been very vocal about wanting to attend weren't able to make it for different reasons, and it really bummed us out. Because of our high decline rate (36%), we  actually had to extend a few last-minute invites in order to meet our minimum. Mostly, we did this by awarding a few extra plus-ones to people who had previously requested them, so again, no hurt feelings.  

 

Even with all of this, we had guaranteed 150 adults, but had 150 people total, including a few children and five vendors, which were all supposed to be half price. So, when I met with my venue coordinator the week before the wedding to give her our final numbers, I was able to negotiate a few upgrades for free, like a martini bar, to make up the price difference. If you're in a situation where you're struggling to meet your minimum, talk to your venue to see if they're willing to upgrade you! In the end, everyone loved the martini bar, and we were able to spend lots of time on the dance floor with the people that were able to make it!

So there you have it, folks! The Waterfall RSVP breakdown! What are everyone's numbers looking like?
* All photos personal unless otherwise specified

 

Programmer's Children Have No Websites

You know the saying “Cobbler’s children have no shoes”? Well, Mami and Papi Waterfall are both computer programmers, but I have zero skillz. I knew early on that I wanted a wedding website to relay much-needed information to our guests, but had no idea how to go about it. Mami W actually volunteered to make our wedding website for us, but she already had a lot on her plate, so I decided to see what I could manage on my own. I fell in love with Mrs. Wallaby and Mrs. Camel’s amazing wedding websites using Wix, so I gave it a try and failed. I was overwhelmed by their customization options and quickly gave up. When I say I have zero skillz, I mean it. ZERO. I knew I had to look for something even more fool-proof.

image via someecards.com

Thankfully, the Hive is such a great resource for reviews that I was able to quickly form a decent list of contenders. After checking out a few different websites, I finally settled on Weddingwire. Some of the most important criteria for me was that it had to be free (because I’m cheap, we’ve established this) and also have the ability to RSVP online because I wanted to make responding as easy and convenient as possible for our guests.  

I’m really glad I found Weddingwire because it offers so much more than just a wedding website. It doesn’t just track RSVP’s and gifts, it also provides several other useful tools like a checklist and budget tracker! There is also an app that you can download that automatically syncs to your phone, so you can update your information on the go. Before I show you my site, I have to warn you - it’s very simple and no frills, but I just needed to get a way to relay essential information to our guests in a way that didn’t ruin my budget or the planet, and was somewhat esthetically pleasing. We also chose a few of our favourite songs for the website, so feel free to listen along!
 

So, let's say you're a guest at the Waterfall wedding. You enter the address into your browser and are greeted by our homepage: 


Once inside, there were several tabs, as you can see. Many of our guests were travelling from out of town, so I wanted to make it easy on them to find information about the airport, the block of rooms we had reserved, and things to do while visiting.

We also included a page with information about our honeymoon registry and a link to our honeyfund account.

I also built a wedding map using WeddingMapper and embedded it on our website. I really recommend using weddingmapper! You can have as many locations as you want, and unlike google maps, it allows you to put different markers for each thing. In this example, you can see the ceremony, reception and hotel locations, as well as our home. I left the map this way on purpose since everything is so close, I didn't want it to look too busy or confusing. You could also add your rehersal dinner location or any special sight-seeing recommendations and places to eat for your guests!

Of course, you could also RSVP online, which I will explain in detail in another post!

 

Did you create a wedding website?

* All photos personal unless otherwise specified

Father of the Bride

Lately, there have been a lot of posts by Blogger Bees dealing with the reality of planning their wedding without their fathers, like Miss Rucksack and Miss Bicycle. I can totally empathize with this because Mr. Waterfall’s parents divorced when he was 15, at which point his dad decided to he could stop being a father and dropped off the face of the earth. I, on the other hand, had a completely different experience. 

Papi Waterfall will openly admit that he had wanted a boy first (macho much?) and was somewhat disappointed to be having a girl, but the moment I wrapped my tiny new-born hand around his finger, he fell in love with his baby girl. In fact, he was so content that a few years later when my mom wanted to have another baby, his reply was literally: “Nah, I’m good”.

All my life, I’ve been daddy’s little girl. My dad taught me my multiplication tables, how to ride a bike (by literally pushing me down a hill) and how to play monopoly. Whenever Papi W needed to install something or build something, it wasn’t Brother Groomsman right there beside him holding the power drill, it was me. I love both of my parents, but my dad and I always had a special bond, probably because we’re similar in so many ways. I have my dad to thank for my love of the Beatles, rollercoasters, and travelling.

Waterfalls in Spain/ personal photo

Ten years ago, when Mr. Waterfall asked me out, I suggested he ask for Papi Waterfall’s blessing first, you know, hombre to hombre. He came over to the house, nervous as hell, and spent what seemed like forever locked in the study with my dad, which must have been terrifying because Papi Waterfall can be super intimidating.  It was totally worth it though, because it made my parents fall in love with Mr. Waterfall. Whenever he gets sad about his dad not being around, I reply with "that's OK, you can borrow mine!".

While planning this wedding, my dad turned out to be an amazing, albeit unlikely ally. I’m not sure how or when it happened, but my dad slowly became my go-to person for wedding stuff and we ended up doing many of the things that brides typically do with their moms together. When we were trying to choose a photographer, my dad looked at every single link I sent him and replied with very insightful comments. When it came time to assemble our invitations, Papi Waterfall was right there beside Mr. Waterfall and me, carefully gluing on wax seals, proudly declaring that he was sure to pass my rigorous inspection. When I fell in love with a cake topper from LaDuree, my dad surprised me by calling a family friend in Paris and having it shipped that same week. When it was two weeks before the wedding and a hundred Cubans had yet to RSVP, it was my dad who called each one to track down their response. When my brother was being super difficult about the groomsmen tuxes, my dad handled it. Suffice it to say that my dad was basically the best Father of the Bride of all time, anything I delegated to him got done quickly and efficiently. It was much later that I found out that it was actually my dad who planned most of my parents’ wedding back in the day!

Mami and Papi Waterfall's wedding in 1983

Because of my special bond with my dad, we were both really looking forward to all the traditional “dad” wedding moments, like him walking me down the aisle and giving me away. One of my favorite moments of the day was actually dancing with my dad during our father-daughter dance, even though I sobbed through the whole thing. But I know that even though he gave me away that day, my dad will always be there to jumpstart my car or fix my computer whenever I need him.

Did anyone else have a helpful father of the bride?