I am completely horrified on your behalf, Belrix. That is inexcusable - how do you plan a party for somewhere between seven and 200 people? GAH, people drive me out of my tree.
Did you include pre-stamped envelopes & RSVP cards within the wedding invitation? About 90% of our invitees responded to the RSVP request.
Nope - we didn’t. This was a budget wedding with home-made invitations.
Guess we could’ve done pre-stamped postcards, that would’ve been cheaper but it, frankly, didn’t occur to us.
Did you end up with considerably more replies after that? Upon reading your post, my first thought was that convention calls for invitations to be sent out about 8 to 10 weeks prior to the wedding. Were some people just waiting, or did you just get completely hosed?
I understand the etiquette, but I sympathize with those who don’t respond. 95% of the RSVP invitations that I’ve received are from people I don’t know, usually for some pricey charity event. I feel no obligation to respond to junk mail that is disguised as a formal invitation.
We never sent postcards. This comment was just “in retrospect”…
We had a simple cake & punch reception - we made a guess on our own as to how many would show, got a cake to feed all. Made slightly too little punch, and had very little leftovers.
Simple, simple, simple was our mantra on our wedding. We even got complimented by a couple people about how nice it was to attend a wedding that wasn’t a circus of bridesmaids, ribbons, flowers, & bric-a-brac.
I wore a suit. My bride had a nice but not very fancy satin dress. The girls wore light spring dresses from JC Penney and my boys work khaki’s, white shirts, & ties. Only our kids stood up with us, emphasizing, we hoped, that not just two people were getting married but rather two families.
Flowers came from the grocery store that morning. Just bunches of daisys.
I think we spent less that $2000 on all and a good third of that was on a photographer.
I’m finding some of the responses saying that the groom’s family can’t be blamed for not wanting to spend a lot of money, and travel really far, for a wedding to be pretty funny. Not because I disagree, but because I once posted on a destination wedding thread here.
We had considered a destination wedding because both of our families are several hours (in opposite directions) from where we are living. Both families are poor, so it was potentially a financial strain for a good sized chunk of them on either side, and there were some disabilities that would make it difficult for a few important members to travel far. The alternative would have been to pick one location versus the other, and basically double the travel time for the unlucky family. We eventually ended up eloping to Vegas by ourselves instead (though admittedly, expense and laziness also played their parts).
I got CASTIGATED. What horrible people our families must be, if they can’t be bothered to travel a few hours and get a hotel room to see us get married! 
I’m sorry, I phrased that poorly. By “after that” I meant “after the 8-weeks-away mark”. Or, was 7 the final number of responses you received.
That is funny. The people I know for certain aren’t coming are mostly my cousins who have moved away from home, with one who’s in province but with young kids and who’s living a few hours away. As much as I’d like to have the whole family there, I can’t really blame my cousins overseas for not making it, it is a heck of a trip when you’re only a few years out of school.