How many People to Invite

If you can comfortably fit 150 people, I would invite 150 people. There's no way to determine how many yes or no RSVPs you'll receive. Obviously 152 or 155 isn't the end of the world, but I wouldn't invite 175 people assuming that at least 25 will decline the invitation.

I would invite a bit more just because you do have room but usually the gist is invite how many your max is just in case they all happen to say yes. Usually people say you can expect 20% decline rate but there's an off chance that may not happen.

Our venue has a second floor that overlooks the first. We have a space for the max of 200 people. They said 120 people fit comfortably down stairs and 80 upstairs. We knew we didn't want anyone to sit upstairs so we said 120 is our limit. We only invited 120. We do have some people we would like to invite if people start to decline (they know they will be invited if we end up having room. The people who may decline are my sisters and their husbands, the kids are still in school and they are out of state so this would open up 6 seats if they do not attend).

You really just need to know your crowd. My friend had a wedding of 300 and she had only a handful decline. But we invited 300ish for our venue because we needed a minimum of 200 (venue was maybe 250/275??), and we knew his extended family out of state that he sees maybe once every 5 years would not be coming. But they are family, so you have to invite them. We ended up at 160, and expected to be just below 200 (we still knew we had to pay for 200 regardless).

I suggest taking your invite list and break them down into expected Yes, Maybe, and No. That may help you draw a line, if you need to. If our venue was tighter, we wouldn't have invited his aunt and cousins that always lived out of state that he never met. But since we had the room, we did. About 25% of our invite list was out of state. My friend with the 300 wedding? Almost exclusively all within 3 hrs of the venue city.

That depends on your budget and where your line of comfort is— only invite the amount of people that would be comfortable if they all came. So, don’t invite 200. Then back down the list. If 190 people came, would it be comfortable? If no, not 190. 180? Not great? Not 180. 170, not ideal but manageable? Cap your guestlist there. It’s always likely you’ll get some declines, but you NEVER know. So plan everything as if everyone you invite will come, even though they ultimately may not. It is always better to be prepared!

We just made a guest list. It wasn't really "how many people should we invite" it was more "here is our guest list, now let's find a venue". Have you made a guest list just to see how many people are on it if you invite everyone you want to?

Rule of thumb is about 20 percent will decline. We actually had exactly 20% decline as we invited 163 and had 130 accept.

This forum got me panicking. Lol. I went and looked at my guest list and while we originally assumed about 100 people, our guest list is at 200!!! So we are doing an A list and B list - discreetly of course so no one gets their feelings hurt.