Reducing Guest Lists due to covid

I personally don't have experience with this, but my husband and I have one close friend do this for their wedding that is in September in PA. She contacted us personally, along with every other guest that she could no longer have attend due to restrictions in her state and said, "This is not the email I wanted to send. Unfortunately due to COVID-19 and the restrictions put in place by our venue, we do have to limit the number of guests attending our wedding because of COVID-19 concerns. Due to this, we are having a very small wedding with immediate family only, and will no longer be able to accommodate the large number of guests we were planning on having. We do hope to celebrate our marriage with you at a later date and we feel terrible about the changes to our plans. If you have booked a room through our room block and/or the hotel has charged you, you may contact them to receive a refund/cancel your reservation. When you call, please ask for Jason and he will help cancel your room and process a refund if you've already been charged. We are currently planning on having a large celebration on our first wedding anniversary where we'd love to have everyone attend. More information will be provided on this as that date gets closer. If you any questions, please contact myself, Chris or visit our wedding website".

We invited 160 people and we will be lucky if even 50 show up at this point. I think the pandemic will weed down your guest list automatically. We had a lot of people coming from different states that just didn’t feel comfortable with traveling and I totally get that.

I cut my guest list from about 120 to 9 (immediate family only)— I personally called/texted everyone I could, than had my mom and MIL contact relatives we didn’t have phone numbers for. Then I put a message on our wedding website saying we were downsizing and giving information on where they could watch a livestream (luckily our church was set up for this, though later I found out the sound didn’t work the whole time! LOL). Everyone was super understanding and supportive (and probably relieved that we’d made the decision for them), and everyone watched the wedding (in silence haha) online so they still felt included.

I'm so sorry you're dealing with all of this tough stuff Courtney! But as long as you're honest and heartfelt with your guests I'm sure they'll understand. I also think it helps if you can share the news personally (like over the phone), and if you can offer a livestream of the ceremony and a quick virtual cheers for those guests I really think that softens the blow a little bit!

You can also check out this article which has great tips: How Do I Downsize My Guest List if I’ve Postponed My Wedding? and this forum post from another bride who dealt with a similar situation: You are uninvited letter.