Staggering Invitations to Limit Numbers...is it ok?

Don't do it. Our wedding was a DW with a max of 30 people or the location changed to inside. We reached out to the people we were considering inviting to see if they'd be able to make the trip before sending out invites. Why don't you try that? We started with our list of 30 and asked those people to make sure we weren't asking more than we could actually invite.

Great question! So I ran into a similar issue but staggering invites is not the way to go about it. What we did was have our travel agent send out our save the dates to the main people mostly family after you send out the save the dates right away you'll have people drop out for personal or financial reasons, when they drop out take them off the guest list right away then you can replace these people with others you can also send save the dates too. Only do this twice though! The first group when people drop out replace them with others, don't continue to do this more times because people will understand the list is limited and won't mind being second choice maybe but 3rd or 4th is pretty tacky.

You need to do this early on though we sent out our save the dates a year and a half in advance after 6 months we went through our list and took out the drop outs and send save the dates to others who weren't included in the first list, if these new people dropped out they still received invites.

Adding to this: I'd make sure if you do something like this that groups of people who talk often are sent their STDs at the same time. So that if Aunt X talks to Aunt Y, they both get their STDs in the same batch. You don't really want word to spread that you're B-listing people

Yes great advice we started with family and friends were B-listed as to not upset anyone. Also no social media posts about wedding, save the dates, invitations ect. If you make a post say something like can't wait to marry this guy don't mention the logistics.