Guest list etiquette

Hey! I wouldn’t invite anyone I’m not personally close to. Just my opinion. I have a few cousins, uncles and aunts that aren’t invited to the wedding, not bc I didn’t want them there but we won’t talk as often so to invite them to our wedding would be rather awkward. I’d definitely invite cousin C & S if you’re really close to them. But I would talk to your fiancé first and you both compose a list of 100 guest in which you both want at the wedding and just kinda go from there. That way if you need to remove or add anyone you can. Hope this helps!

The general etiquette rule is to invite in circles -- so if you invite one cousin or aunt, you have to invite all the cousins or aunts. However, exceptions can be made if that person is abusive/racist/toxic in some way. In this case maybe ask your mom, if you invite that one cousin but not the others, will they be offended? This situation may have come up before at other family events.

Some people say that you are required to invite all people in a group without exception. Meaning if you are only close to one aunt/uncle or cousin then you must invite them all. Or if you are closer to best friends than your parents or siblings then parents/siblings take priority and best friends don’t get invited. That makes zero sense and is why couples have guest regret. Make a list of people you can’t imagine the day without and only those receive invites. If that means you are closer to one cousin or other relative and not everyone, then don’t invite people you have no relationship with. People will be more upset because they see the invite as a gift grab rather you sincerely wanting them in attendance.


Also something that people don’t realize or understand is that you can and should start a tradition of a family reunion picnic at another time at a local park that everyone contributes to and is not on your wedding dime.

There's two schools of thought here: 1) invite in circles- if you invite one aunt/ cousin then you invite all aunts/ cousins, or 2) only invite who you want. A bunch of different factors play into which decision is best for you, such as your budget, how different people will react to some people being invited but not others, whether those not invited have a history of causing disruption or are otherwise unwelcome, etc. Depending on how many additional invites you'd be looking at, the financial cost vs whether certain reactions are worth your time and mental energy may make it easier to just invite the extras. Ultimately, that's something you and your spouse will have to weigh. Wishing you the best of luck

Depends on how much your "circles" overlap. Like, I would invite all first cousins on one side ie my moms but not necessarily on my dads, because they don't even know each other it would be fine. The first cousins on the same side do know each other of course so I wouldn't just invite some of those.

Well this is the part where your small wedding becomes larger than you hoped. Our original intent 75, what we ended up with a healthy 200 and counting. Anyhoo I think it’s important to visualize your wedding As an opportunity to bring the family together and all its complexities so if your budget would allow it might be nice to expand it to include all of these important people. If not maybe another option would be to live stream it to those guest who cannot attend.

Have you set a budget yet? This will help you determine what your absolute max guest count can be. From there, make a list of people you couldn’t imagine the day without. After that you can make determinations on which circles could still fit in your max guest count. Sometimes you can go by how far away certain circles are when deciding on whether to include or cut. For example, my mom told us we didn’t have to invite any of her aunts, uncles, or cousins that live across the country as it was likely they won’t come. They understood and didn’t take issue with not being invited.

You invite who you want we have some family members on both sides. That we didn't invite and we are ok with that some we used to be close with and over the years. We are having a small number 55 to 65 or less we are ok with that too. We can not and will be pushed by no one they have gotten married and didn't mention it to us or asked to attend either. Because the numbers can grow larger we are keeping it right where we want it

I understand that traditional etiquette may dictate otherwise, but I think that you shouldn't invite people who aren't really in your life at the expense of inviting people who are.

I guess if you were having a huge wedding it makes sense to invite in circles, but our venue can only hold 100 people and just our families alone would fill this number if we started inviting all our aunts and uncles, cousins and our grown up cousin's families!

I am going totally rogue and only inviting my aunt and uncle on my dad's side - I'm happy to explain the reason's why to people who may ask, but ultimately we are restricted by venue and finances. You can't please everyone, sadly!