Venue Guest Max

Unless this is a destination wedding for a LOT of that guest list and you know they wont travel or you are inviting a lot of people just to be nice but knowing they won't show....you'll need to cut it down. 5-10 people over maybe doable 40 ?! Absolutely not

You need to cut your guest list or find a bigger venue that can accommodate your current list. You should never entertain the idea of inviting over your venue's capacity.

If you haven’t sent out STD’s or invites yet, I’d cut down the list to the venue max - generally a percentage of guests will RSVP no, but it’s always possible that no one will and you’ll have everyone come. Better safe than sorry!

At this point I’m assuming you put a deposit down so you can’t change venues. I’ll spare you the lecture.

Can you change the style of the recpetion? I know many places can fit more people cocktail style than sit down dinner. You’d have to do heavy apps and food stations which will probably wind up being more expensive but you might be able to accommodate more guests.

Cut the guest list. We invited 180 and had 178 attend. Do not count on a percentage not attending because that doesn't always happen.

Cut the guest list or change it to cocktail style. We had exactly 20% decline.

View Quoted Comment This is my fear. Not because of space but $$$. It adds up so fast!

Yes- Save the dates have been sent out and deposit has been put down. We have a ton of single friends so when I factor in the guys that more than likely won't bring a guest, I am down to 168.

Do not count on declines! Like everyone else says, cut the guest list! Hopefully, you haven't sent STDs/Invites.

If that's the venue max, then it could involve state fire codes, and in that case, they WILL turn away guests who show up beyond the max. Imagine having that conversation with your family and friends when they are being escorted out.

You should never, ever, invite beyond the max capacity of the venue. You’ll want to cut your guest list. It’s less embarrassing saying “sorry! We maxed the venue and weren’t able to invite everyone we wanted to”, than having to say “hey I know you rsvpd yes but you can’t come anymore because I’m over the max my venue can hold. Others rsvpd yes as well but we’re cutting you”. It’ll work out as long as you don’t invite over

I think I’ve read that the average wedding has 20% decline. But it depends on a lot of factors. Do both of your families live in the area of the wedding? My family is pretty spread out along the east coast and my fiancé’s family is on the west coast. Out wedding is on the west coast and we have about 30% can’t make it. You could take away plus ones until you know if their is room for them

You should be fine.

View Quoted Comment Did you send STD to everyone? Or just OOT guests? If you only sent them to OOT people, our need to take a hard look at those local guests you were going to send an invite to - maybe coworkers or friends you haven’t even spoken to in over a year.

If you sent STD and/or invites to 190 people already, you may have to plan for a cocktail reception. First and foremost, find out from your venue if the 150 limit is a table-seated count or fire code limit. Fingers crossed it’s the former otherwise you’ll end up with the the situation Andrea described: your guests being turned away.

Why would you invite more than your venue holds? You can NEVER depend on declines, even with a destination wedding. I would be finding a new venue and just deal with the loss in deposit because you'll have problems anyway with sending STDs to people that you don't invite with an invitation, or the venue turning away people invited because they are at capacity. Or even worse, the fire Marshall shooting the whole wedding down because there are too many people on the building. Capacity limits exist for a reason and your guests won't be comfortable.

Limit your invites to 150! Put the remaining 40 on a B list. Everytime someone declines the invite, you can send to another person on the B list. But don’t invite 40 more than the max, if they all come you’ll be screwed!

Shutting* the wedding down

Well first, you should not have invited over your venue max. I would have sent one round “A” list invites, waited for declines and then sent out the rest. Also, did you offer plus ones to all your guests? That’s definitely not necessary. Couples should be invited together and the wedding party should get plus ones but other guests are optional and if you are tight on space I would not have extended plus ones to all the guests.

Did you send out your invitations with everyone getting a plus one? If you didn’t include that part on the save the date I would cut your list by cutting the plus ones. That will help greatly :-)

Our venue only held 300 but we invited 356. We made the amount easily but we did go through our list ahead of time and count out all of the people who we thought couldn't make it. I've heard of this not working out someone once.