S/O Wedding Guest List - How did you do it?

[DownToEarth]

So how did you decide your wedding guest list?
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We asked for a list from my parents and ILs of who they would like to invite. Then DH and I sat down and wrote out a list of own (family and friends) and then we consolidated the lists and figured out how many we were going to invite. We even guessed (based on distance and cost) who might come so we could get a good idea of how many would actually attend. Then we went looking for venues.

I assumed that anyone single would bring a +1 and that most of the families would bring kids.

It worked really well for us. We invited over 200, but I assumed around 140 people attending and I think we had 120 actually show up.

[wrathofkuus]

We thought of who we were close to, and wanted to be there, and invited them. We invited a few with a guest, but only one person actually brought one. We ended up at 40 people, including us.

Our parents did try giving us their own lists, but we shut that down fast.

[basilosaurus]

We thought of people we liked and invited them. It was pretty easy.

No family member on either side asked for their people to be included. In fact, my mom didn't want us to invite her sisters, not b/c she dislikes them, but b/c she knew they wouldn't come and didn't want it to be seen as begging for a gift. Hell, she didn't even want us to invite her own parents for the same reason.

Then again, we shut down some of the chaos early by choosing a destination wedding, partly to avoid having to invite my grandparents' friends. Not that they would have asked, but it would have been expected.

[IIOY]

My SN is actually the result of my various arguments with MIL over who was to be invited to our wedding. I married into a family that had some very traditional ideas about weddings, down to the groom's family not paying for shit while inviting every last person the MIL had ever befriended. We've been married for nearly 8 years and my MIL is dead, but I could still whip myself into a ball of fury if I thought long and hard enough about it.

[bugandbibs]

We picked our venue, and then decided on caterers/meal plan. Once we did that, we figured out how much we could afford and set a limit to the list. MH and I each wrote out a "dream list", totaled the numbers and started cutting. We gave each side of the family a 10 person limit of their friends (like my mom's 2 best friends of 20+ years). We added people from the cut list as we could. All in all, we had around 100 people at our wedding.

[msmerymac]

We did a quick head count of who we wanted/had to invite before looking for a venue. We both knew we wanted a kind of traditional wedding, but on the smaller side. Like under 100, which is small for my family (my parents had 186, and 100 were probably my dad's family - my dad's cousin's daughter had almost 300 when she got married 9 years ago, and she didn't even invite any of her second cousins, just her dad's cousins and spouses, plus friends and stuff).

I knew we were going to invite immediate family, aunts, uncles, and first cousins. We don't know that many people with kids, so we invited them (especially since almost everyone with kids had to travel).

I asked my parents if there was anyone they really wanted to invite. They were both awesome about not sending me a list of 50 people, since they didn't contribute. My dad added 5, my mom added 3. None of their guests ended up coming.

The family members I had attend were: Mom, stepfather, brother, dad, dad's girlfriend, aunt, cousin, cousin's teenage son.

H's family members were: MIL, FIL, SIL1, SIL2, SIL2's BF, aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin's wife.

None of H's cousins with kids came. He had 4 other uncles who couldn't make it, either.

Neither of us have living grandparents (my husband's grandmother died 6 weeks before our wedding, but she was 99 and lived in Iowa, so we knew she wouldn't make it).

The rest were local friends, college friends, a maybe 2-3 high school friends. We were able to put together a table of my college friends, H's college friends, a few tables of local friends, etc. My poor mom and stepfather sat with 1 of my BMs and a few more of my friends.

Anyway we paid for a minimum of 75, invited a total of 135 in theory (if everyone brought a date), and ended up with 68. We only had 3 under-18s - my cousin's almost-18-year-old son and 2 toddlers. It worked out well. I still think it could have been smaller though. And there are a few people I kind of regret not inviting because there were other people there that they knew. So I think we either should have invited them OR cut it down to like 40. It was fun though, and everyone said they had a good time.

[ringstrue]

It really wasn't a big deal.

Dh's family is small as hell and my mom's family (the only "big" part) all lived across the country. We also got married in my hometown and not where we were living so we only invited friends who were close enough to either be in the wedding party or willing to travel a bit for a wedding.

We had 80 something guests. I think the venue could take 100+

[osulori]

We made separate lists of my family (large, Catholic, lots of aunts/uncles/cousins/cousins kids on both side) and his (not so large), then sat down and made a list of our mutual friends, his HS friends, and my undergrad/grad school friends. After we shit a brick over THAT number, we ran the family lists by respective parents to see if we missed anyone and so they could add any family friends or distant relatives they felt the need to invite (which blessedly was only a few).

THEN I had a Come to Jesus talk with J. He's one of those people who has stayed friends with or at least in touch with a great deal of people from HS, and wanted to invite them ALL...so I had to be the mean witch who made him draw the line somewhere. I believe the line was "Have we talked to them in the last 6-9 months? No? Then they're off the list.". That got it down from 300 to 275. I should have known he'd want to invite everyone he's ever met...the reason our wedding party was as big as it was (7 GMs, 7BMs, FG, RB) is because he wanted too many f'ing groomsmen.

ETA: we were lucky that the size limits for both our church and reception sites were fairly high (300+ each). I just made him cut his list down because damnit, someone had to be the bad guy.

[ering1115]

my mom was paying and we could afford just about 225. so we did 200 plus bridal party (6 on each side w/ +1s). that gave each side 100 people. we invited 225 and ended up with 205 coming. yikes!
there was some drama because mil's family invites kids, mine doesn't and lots of other stuff. essentially she wanted more people but hey, money talks and there wasn't any to go around from that end. if dh and i are only inviting about 25 people who aren't related to us then yeah, you aren't inviting your friends from the office.

[emilyj]

We were paying for it ourselves, we were in our 30's, and we were doing a destination wedding. We decided on how many people we felt we could afford, and decided on who we felt were the people closest to us that we wanted to be there. We didn't ask for input from either of our parents.

We got input from my MIL about how 'the family' was upset that more from my H's side wasn't invited, to which I told her to tell them they were welcome to discuss that with H and I directly, but strangely, that conversation never materialized.

[Deleted]

I had a very, very small wedding. It was us, the kids, my IL's, my SIL and BIL, my parents, and my grandmother.

fin

[dev22]

We wanted to have a smallish wedding. I think we invited 75 people, and are criteria was close family and friends only. So no third cousins we have only met 4 times in our life. We wanted to look out into the crowd and know every single person well. My parents requested that their best friends attend, and that was fine by me because they are basically extended family that I have known my entire life.

[lollipopsandcrisps]

We eloped.

Problem solved.

[EllieArroway]

May 15, 2012 16:04:00 GMT -5 lollipopsandcrisps said:

We eloped.

Problem solved.

Us too. I'm so glad I didn't have to deal with this crap--just reading through this thread kind of gave me a headache.

[2vermont]

May 15, 2012 15:02:58 GMT -5 emilyj said:

We were paying for it ourselves, we were in our 30's, and we were doing a destination wedding. We decided on how many people we felt we could afford, and decided on who we felt were the people closest to us that we wanted to be there. We didn't ask for input from either of our parents.

Well, we were pushing 40 and we were paying for wedding so we basically decided the guest list for the most part also. IIRC we cut it off at first cousins (generally speaking) with a few exceptions. Once the main list was created we did check in with our parents to see if there were any close friends they wished to invite. Thankfully, both sides were reasonable. I think the guest list was about 100....and 80 actaully attended.

[doctorwho]

You can't do anything smaller than 75 for my family. My parents hang out with their siblings and cousins regularly. As in, 2nd cousins are regular peer group in my family. Anyone over 18 got a +1, anyone dating someone for over a year was invited with that person by name. Some brought a guest, some didn't. There was a table of my dads sibs, my mom's sibs, then moms extended family.

My first cousins and their spouses took 2 tables.

1 table for coworkers and DH's boss.

We had a table of my college friends, all of whom declined to bring their SOs, except for 1 BM (which was fun).

DH had 1 table for most of his family, but his younger sibs went to school with my cousins, so we were able to mix tables pretty well. He didn't have a huge guest list, so his brother's roommate and best friend got invites with +1s.

At the end, we had a venue for 200, and a guest list of what I thought was 180. Then a month before the wedding, I realized that the +1s put me at 225. I had a meltdown on TN. 150 said yes, 145 showed up. And yes, I absolutely knew exactly who RSVPd yes and didn't come.