Guest List: a and b List??

One of the quickest ways to offend your guests is a B list. Even if you don't intend to, people do find out that they are lower tier than your first group. Always prepare for 100% attendance because it does happen.
Just decide who you can't imagine spending the day without and send announcements to the rest. No one is offended that way.

Jana is right, people will know that they were a B lister and will be offended.

I know that many people say an A & B guest list is rude but I personally don’t see a problem with it 🤷🏾‍♀️

I’m probably going to be in the minority here, but I say there’s nothing wrong with inviting people in waves. (I don’t like using the term A list & B list, because it implies that the people/relationships in the “B list” are less important or less valued, which isn’t the case). We will be sending invitations in waves. We are doing this because we are having a destination wedding and we both have friends & family all across the U.S. When it comes to people traveling (like in your situation as well), it’s impossible to predict who will actually attend. And just because someone wasn’t invited in the 1st round of invites, it doesn’t mean you don’t love them, value them, and want them to share your special day with you- it just means there were other people who you were obligated to invite 1st. If you have room for 100 people and only 50 RSVP yes, why WOULDN’T you extend invitations to those other people you wanted to invite in the first place?? We are making sure the second round of invites are to those who wouldn’t speak to people in our 1st round (for instance, family in the first round then out of state friends in the 2nd round) just to make sure those who were invited later don’t feel as though they were “B listers” or that we didn’t very much want them there in the 1st place- we 100% would have invited them from the beginning had we had the venue capacity to do so.

Oh, and if you plan on doing this, make sure you make your RSVP deadline a lot earlier than you otherwise would have so that your 2nd round of invited guests have plenty of time to RSVP also

A lot of people will tell you this is rude, but in our case we had to cut guests due to Covid restrictions and we would have loved to have everyone of we could. FH and I reached out to the guests directly to let them know that Covid restrictions at our venue made us cut the number of guests. When we got a few no rsvps from some immediate family, we discussed and decided to reach out to those we cut again and let them know we would still love to have them and now had the space. We notified them by 6 weeks before the wedding to allow them time to make travel arrangements, everyone else received invites 12 weeks out. About half of our rsvps came within the first two weeks, a few trickled in over the next few weeks, and nothing for the last two weeks leaving us about 1/3 to follow up with before our final count is due 8/28.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this 100%! For when we sent out invites for our original date (we since postponed), we had two groups that we sent invites to: the first group was family and wedding party, and everyone else was in the second group. The number of people in the first group accounted for maybe half of our max guest count, so we knew we'd be able to invite some people from the second list, but just didn't know how many. The responses from the first group indicated how many additional people from our second group that we could invite, and by splitting into two groups, we were going to be able to invite more people from our second group than we would have if we only sent out one round of invites.

View Quoted Comment I've never heard of it referred to as waves, and I think thats a much nicer way of putting it. 🙂

B listing is incredibly rude, even if you decide to call it something else.

We kind of are doing a b list. We sent out invites at 9 weeks to 135 guest. We fully intend on less than 100 coming. 90 would be my optimal number. I know that sounds like a lot of no’s but we sent out a lot of invites to family and friends who live pretty far away and don’t come around for much. Most of our families are big, so one family declining could equal 5-7 people. My fiancé’s family are also acting like they may not come. He started a new job a month ago. It’s a small company and he has quickly gotten to know the guys. We decided that if we get more declines then we intended then we will invite them 4 weeks before the wedding. So far we have received no declines, but only 34 guest RSVP’d

If you are cutting down your list due to covid capacity regulations, then I don’t think anyone will have a problem with you having a b list. Otherwise, it can be considered rude

Honestly I had a and b list. The b list were people my mother In law didn’t get to invite in a list because I capped her limit

Usually I would find this rude and not do it but if it’s COVID related as others have stated, I don’t find it to be that big of a deal if done correctly.

Since social distancing I would definitely do a A and B list

This chart is a pretty good tool to use to cut down on the guest list.

B listing is rude. Instead of starting with your list and cutting, start with your parents/grandparents/siblings and add in groups (aunts/uncles, then cousins or friends, or whatever) until you reach your cap. Include people who you cannot imagine having your wedding without first.

We sorta did an A/B list, we decide only ceremony/reception guest is our A list. And those on B list are reception only. The reception hall can hold more people while trying to socially distance, the church wasn’t the same, so we picked our closest people who we would want to attend for that. Sent those invites out and waiting on RSVP and currently waiting on reception only ones to arrive. We also cut out a lot of kids to help with size of guest list. I did post a little something about COVID19 on our wedding website in hopes no one gets offended.

My FH and I have had to pretty much do the same things. I've referred to them as "rounds". The first round was pretty easy because we can only have 150 guests, so it was all family, the bridal party and then a few other friends. 2nd round consisted of more friends as well as 3 picks for each set of parents. As the no's come in, we've gone through the list and picked a few more people to send invitations out too. I ended up having a color coded spreadsheet to help keep track. We're still sending invites out and now I just have to figure out a non-tacky way of adding in a note letting them know they need to RSVP by a new date instead of the one that is printed on the RSVP.

I have an A,,B, C ,and D list. I have started on my C list now. My May wedding was a smaller more intimate wedding. My fiancee and I are both on our 3rd marriages and paying for this ourselves. We have the sole responsibility of 5 children so we had a small budget. WE only invited our immediate families, Aunts and Uncles, and 3 Mutual friend couples. That had us to 61 people. WE didn’t invite cousins. AS people started dropping off due to covid we called plan B and explained. More original guests are bailing so we are now calling plan C. All my B’s and C’s have surprisingly been more excited to attend then the originals invited. It goes to show me that my friends are true friends and family is family. lol

I don't like the term A & B list. I would be offended if I were referred to as B list. I think if you just did an announcement saying "right now we can only invite 50(or so) people at the moment. We're reserving that limit for family right now and will be sending invites in waves in case anything changes so please be on the lookout for an invitation". Or something like that.