Why does my guest count keep going up?

Honestly, I'm not laughing at the situation, because that's no joke!! But you tell your story in such a way that literally cracks me up!!

You're right, that's not how it's supposed to work at all. Cuts usually mean the number gets smaller.

Goodness, that's rough! Well, at least you are closer to your max than you were! You only need to cut 17 more!!

Are you giving a lot of people plus ones? Maybe if you rethink that, you'll get under 250. Good luck!

The guest list was my least favorite part. I was sweating bullets for a long time over our count. We invited over our venue max. It all worked out in the end, however, I wouldn't recommend it. 🤣 good luck!

I'm cutting people's plus ones. My friend just told me this weekend "I almost had a date to your wedding, but we broke up. If we get back together I'll bring him". Umm....no you won't. I've never met anyone she's dated because they come and go so quickly. It's less than three months out. If you aren't in a relationship now you don't get a plus one. We are over 300 guests. Children don't get counted in the catering total but I'm starting to worry about space. This wedding is a long time coming (we have been dating for 8 years) and people are really excited to be invited.

I hate the guest list. It still makes me sick thinking of it. I think that we are over 200 now. The venue holds 250 - so we are still within range & I know that we are going to have a ton of rsvp no’s bc a good portion are out of state & it’s a kids free wedding.

If it helps, we invited 280 with a 250 max

View Quoted Comment A little bit. Thanks.

Ours kept creeping up too! I know you didn't ask, but if I could offer a word of advice from my experience 😂 You don't have to send save the dates to everyone! I wish we had not sent them to our entire guest list because I feel like costs kept creeping up for other things and looking back we could have saved money by keeping the guest list a little lower. Of course I had to invite them once I sent a save the date (except my bratty cousin and her racist fiance who are not getting an invitation) so looking back I would have only sent save the dates to people who eight months later I really wanted at my wedding and not all the people who the family added🤷

Oh and also.. "we should have eloped" has come out of my mouth so much the past few months.. Hang in there ♥️

View Quoted Comment That is excellent advice!
We are actually doing that.
One of my bridesmaids had a similar experience.

View Quoted Comment We've only been dating for 3 years, but we were also both on the #singleforlife plan. So I understand so much excitement.

View Quoted Comment Unfortunately no plus ones. We did pad the count by 7 due to his early 20 cousins.
They aren't officially getting plus ones, but if one of them pops up with a serious relationship before then, we won't stress.
We're also committing some etiquette faux paus as we are adding college age students still living at home to their parents invite. (I'm of firm belief that anyone over 18 should get a separate invitation.) By adding cousins John, Jim, and Jeff to Aunt Janet's invitation, we are hoping that they take a hint and dont bring a date. The only college aged kids living at home who get their own invitations are fiances younger siblings and their significant others who have been together for 2.5 years and 8 months.

My side specifically, I have a rule that they have to have been a big part of my life for 10-15 years minimum, and still be in contact a minimum of 4 times a year.

This was honestly the most stressful part for us so far. FMIL fought to have people added, to give her single friends guests, etc. today as I finished putting all of our invites together she seemingly forgot everything she caught with us over (that we agreed to in the end to make her happy) and was like “oh, why are you sending this person an invite?” 🧐

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My FH and I feel the exact same way about plus ones and the cut off for allowing one. We are pretty close to our venue's max, if I added everyone's plus one, well, they wouldn't be invited.

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I made sure not to send save the dates to those I wasn't sure about yet. There are a lot of OOT guests, so I needed to send them, but I kind of wish I didn't send them to some of the local people due to cost. But what's done is done. Haha. And when FH and I were working on sending them out, he added like 5 people. I'm like, uh I told you I needed a guest list forever ago, quit adding people. Luckily there were people from his mom's list that we cut due to no address or the STD got returned. There was also one on her list that said he was bringing his two daughters -- my thought: "That's not how this works." However, I'm okay with it since he was going to be coming alone and it's still early. I just hope the rest of FMIL's list doesn't think it's okay to do that and I hope she tells them it's not okay to just bring whoever they want without being invited.