Guest List

This is tough. While you can expect declines, you usually don't want your guest list to go over the venue limit. Can you cut down on your list a bit? What helped me was to be a bit more stringent: if I hadn't talked to you in a year, you were out. That kind of thing.

Don’t risk this. Several folks here invited 100+ guests and had 80-100% guests show.

I would only have 250 then add your parents' number as the extras for those who can't come.

Does this number include children? We had to cut children from our wedding because we went over the number of people we had estimated.

I definitely wouldn’t invite more than your venue will hold. How will you make the call on who to uninvite if you go over that number? Venues typically have a max occupancy because of fire codes. Break that and your event could get shut down.

I wouldn't invite even one person over your max capacity, but 50 is way overboard.

I would not have more than 250 invited at all as that number is most likely for fire codes and things like that. If you invite 300 and 275 show, you won’t have space for them.

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Exactly this. Not worth the risk and stress.

Yep, I wouldn't invite any more than your venue will hold. It's not ideal, but as you get declines in you could send out invites to the others on your list to make up for the declines. I'd just make sure you send out invites with enough time to send out a "second round" without it being obvious of a second round.

View Quoted Comment The only issue with that is we’d have to send out invites now basically to do that, and it’ll be st least another two weeks.

View Quoted Comment Yes, we have children in the list. Lots of guests are from out of town

View Quoted Comment We had a ton of out of toen guests as well, but we gad to cut out children in order to invite all the adults we wanted there. I would recommend considering eliminating children.

View Quoted Comment Lots of the children are family, and FH and I want them to be there so I think we will cut others before we cut children.
We will keep it in mind though!

View Quoted Comment Okay, if you aren't willing to cut children then I would cut other people from the list. If your venue only hilds, 250 then you can't invite more than that.

300 is WAY WAY too many to invite over your max. I’d even say 275 is too many. Sure, declines happen, but there’s no guarantee, and issues could arise if you’re even 1 over, depending on fire codes and such. Counting on 25 people to decline is a lot, counting on *50* is more than just “cutting it close” ...and certainly not worth the stress.

View Quoted Comment Yeah I kind of thought it might be too much, just wanted to get opinions because everyone seems to say only 70-80% will actually show up.
But better safe than sorry for sure!

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Especially with a guest list as large as yours, it's rare, but there are plenty of posts on this forum from brides who had 95-100% acceptance rates. I agree with others -- don't invite one person over your venue capacity. There have been posts from panicked brides trying to figure out they are going to "uninvite" people to keep from having more than the venue max capacity. I cannot even imagine what a fiasco that would be.

You need to invite the amount you can have incase the off chance that everyone does show up! (It happens) So I would relook at the people invited really seeing who you want there and maybe talk to your parents about how many they think they'll need

Not only would I not invite 1 person over the 250 limit, I’d actually cap mine at 200-225. (I know that’s not what you want to hear.)

When a venue says they can accommodate 250, yes, they can fit 250 in the space, but in my experience it is VERY cramped. My venue says they can hold 220, which they can, but it would be very unpleasant for my guests.

Don't risk going over. Only invite 250.