Wedding Advice!

Girl, I feel your pain! I was in the exact same situation when I started planning our destination wedding. Your story is exactly like mine – FH & I live in 1 state (where most of his family lives), my family is in another state, and my closest friends are in yet another state. No matter where we had it, people were going to have to travel. So we figured we might as well pick a fun destination and give them a place worth traveling to! I have a gigantic family, where FH has a very small one. The guest list has been the only thorn in our side during this planning process. And it makes it even harder when you are dealing with a destination wedding. Ultimately, I was told never to try to anticipate how many people will show up, because 9 times out of 10 you’re going to get it wrong LOL Instead, you should always plan for the amount of people you have invited. If you invite 100 people, expect 100 people to show up. If you invite 250 people, plan the wedding for 250 people. Unfortunately, this leaves a lot of room for wasted money. But, it is always better to have too much room, food, booze, etc. than to not have enough! I’ve seen several brides on here who try to anticipate the amount of guests that would actually attend their wedding, and booked a venue to accommodate that amount of people... only to have way more RSVP. Which put them in the horribly awkward situation of having to uninvite people because they did not have room to accommodate them. Nightmare!!

We made our invite list, which came out to about 150 people, and looked at places that either required no minimum or a low amount of people for the minimum but could accommodate the amount of people we wanted to invite. I noticed that non-Saturdays offered a lower guest minimum, which is why we chose a Friday just in case. Nobody really knows the guest count until they start receiving rsvps, so you just have to try to plan with the amount of people you want to invite.

The first thing you need is to have a definite list of people you will invite. It sounds like you might already have a list, but is it a definite one?
You should only book a venue that has enough room for all the people you’re inviting. It shouldn’t be based on how many might come because like you said you cannot tell who will come.
It should also be within budget, most places charge per person so you should only invite the amount of people that you can actually afford, you don’t want to invite more people that you can afford thinking a percent of them won’t show up and then they actually do show up.

The process is really much easier/pragmatic if you save venue-hunting for *after* you make a preliminary guest list. The guest list can fluctuate a bit, but it's important to ensure it has enough space to cover 100% (with some extra room at the top) of your list.

Just to keep in mind: if you really are planning for December 2021, many people have holiday/New Year's travel plans that could eat up a bit of their December budget. It's great to assume most of your guests will attend, but there are always factors in each person's life that could preclude them from coming, especially to a destination wedding. That being said, it's a good idea to plan for 100% attendance!