Draft Guest Count vs Final Guest Count

If the price is based on guest count, usually you’ll pay the deposit based on the 150 up front and then your final count will be due a few weeks before for your final invoice. My venue is priced differently by range. We paid for the 25-85 package, so if we go over 85 we’ll have to pay an extra thousand although I don’t see that happening at all. As far as my catering and rentals and transportation, the estimate I received was based on 80 people and when I have my numbers they’ll adjust my final bill.

Our guest list was 154. My venue let me book with 80 ppl and then gave me a $35/pp charge for every guest over 80.
To me that was the best way to handle.

It depends on your venue and how they price. Most have a "minimum" -- it can be a minimum number of guests (at a pp charge) you will be responsible for the cost of, regardless of how many come (so your contracted minimum is 120 guests, but even if you only have 100 you'll be billed the total for 120) and/or they may have a "food & beverage minimum" amount that you'll need to spend whether you have 100 guests or 200. A food & beverage minimum might be better because you can always upgrade your choices to meet the minimum (e.g., if you have 150 guests your budget requires you to choose a chicken entree and a beer/wine bar; however, if you only have 100 guests, your contract is going to require you to pay the same $$$ minimum, but you can now spend more -- steak and full premium bar -- on your smaller number of guests). Generally, a lower minimum gives you more flexibility as long as the total number of guests fits the venue capacity. Do NOT plan on inviting more guests than the physical capacity; you don't want to have to later tell people you need to uninvite them or the fire marshal is going to shut your wedding down. (Read old posts, it's happened!) Good luck!

PS -- there are lots of ways venues charge and the potential for extra charges/costs, so be sure you ask a lot of questions and read your contract thoroughly before you sign anything.

It depends on the venue. We paid a flat deposit fee and our final balance will be based on our final headcount 2 weeks before the wedding. This is mainly because our food and drink is all through the venue. I would book somewhere that has enough room for your “maybes” to be on the safe side. I’m 2 years you might have new friends or plus ones etc. I would ask every place you tour about minimums, maximums and when your final headcount is due. If you’re getting outside careering the final headcount date would be something to ask them too.

We didn’t have to pay per person for our venue. We payed a flat rate for the venue that didn’t matter how many we had attend (unless we went over building capacity of course). All of the venues I looked into were like this. It might be a location thing, but it looks like it really depends on the venue.

They normally want a final head count a month to 2 weeks before wedding day and it should go by that not your estimated count.. its normally the food that is per person not venue you just have to make sure to find a venue big enough to accommodate the 150 you plan on. And be careful bc people will come up and say well dont i get an invite stay true to your 150 bc other wise youll have a ton of people and then if venue cant fit that many your sol...so food goes by cost per person not venue ...

View Quoted Comment Wow thats alot ..you would think that they would do a flat 100 at least not 80 people ..that stinks you had to pay all that extra ...well i hope your day is all you dreamed of bc for that price it better bw dang good lol

You live or are having your wedding around area i live awesome ...good luck

All venues are different and you do not pay the 150 upfront. Most requiere a deposit and the final head count is towards the end once is all decided. My venue was just the rental of the place so I picked the small package since I was having less than 55 guest and then. If I were to end up with more I’ll have to upgrade to the next package. But again every place is different.

View Quoted Comment Actually its not that bad. We never thought all 154 would come anyway. 80% are out of town and country. We will likely end up with just at 100. I found this better than paying for 120 and then only having 100 guests. This way i will not overpay.

Talk to venues specifically about this, but for us— we told them how many people we were planning to invite, so all quotes/estimates/initial payments were based off that (150) number. They had a final headcount due 14 days before the wedding, and this count would be the guaranteed minimum — they recalculated the final invoice based on the final number of guests at this point (so estimated we owed say $5000 but once out count was in the bill was adjusted and it was only $3000). After this 14 day count, if anyone dropped out, we still would’ve had to pay for them , since this count was our minimum.

SOME venues to require a minimum guest count from the start. They call it a number of guests but really it is so they ensure you’re spending at least $X (which is to say, it’s okay if your minimum is 100 and you only have 95 attending— just you will still need to pay the difference), but everywhere is a little different with minimums and such. At any rate, wedding venues are prepared for the fact that you don’t know exact numbers when booking— this is common! If you tell them how many you plan to invite , they should understand that they won’t all be attending

View Quoted Comment Thats good ..glad to hear hope you have a great wedding day

Thank you! Same to you!

Our venue required a $500 deposit. 6 month out, we had to pay half of the remaining food/beverage minimum (minimum was $6,500 and we had already paid $500) so we paid $3,000. 2 weeks before the wedding, we had to pay the remaining balance on the minimum as well as anything over the minimum. Our pp price for adults was $90ish, so we easily met the minimum lol. When we booked the venue, we told them our estimated guest count was 150, and they priced everything based off that but we ended up having 118 (not including vendors).