Guest List Question

StephJean83

I am curious how people trimmed their guest lists. My FH and I decided that 300 guests is where we would like to keep our list. When we wrote out our guest lists, my list with my parents lists came to 125 people. My FH and FFILs list is around 255 people, which makes our total about 80 over what we are comfortable hosting. I'm not really sure how we go about trimming the lists. Do we both cut 40 people? Do we figure a percentage to each cut? I know on my list, I probably could cut most of the 80 overage but that doesn't seem fair. I know we have time to finalize our lists but I'd like to start collecting addresses from everyone.

[Deleted User]

We had a similar situation.  FI's got a huuuuge family.  All four of us(FI, myself, and the moms) had to make cuts.  FMIL made the most cuts because she had the biggest list to begin with.  She and FFIL included a bunch of people he worked with in the past, which I think had something to do with the fact that he was unemployed at the time.  I think that might seemed like another way they could network but we just couldn't accommodate that many people in the event that they all accepted the invitation.

We aimed to have a guest list of about 250 people and it was over 300 originally.  The final number we came to was 252 and it took a few nights on the phone for FI and FMIL to make their cuts.  My sympathies, my friend.

erinlin25

who is hosting and or paying (sounds like you and FI)?  considering his familys guest list is double yours and your parents, I would say they need to cut back a bit.  Say you can accomodate x number of guests.  Unless they are shelling out money for that many guests, they should cut back.  If they are paying then they are entilted to invite more guests if they'd like. 

In terms of trimming--look at your list, and you sort of have to "rank" them in groups by a priority.  First list people who are a must invite, no question.  Then have a list of people who you would like to invite but could live without.  When I trimmed my list I looked back and cut friends from my past or my parents cut some of their friends that I did not knowwell, etc--If I had not spoke to them in over a year I put them on my maybe list.  We asked FMIL to do the same.  Once we had a better idea of what the guest list looked liked I was able to add a few of those people on, but still had to cut people.  It was hard, but I kept telling myself I had not spoke to them in 3,4,5 years... obviosuly not as important as the people I see/talk to frequently.  Of course FILS never commented on their list until the day we were ordering invites and tried to add a bunch of random people.  FI was awesome and had to stand ground and say no, I'm sorry we had asked you months ago if there were changes so we cannot accomodate these additions. 

StephJean83

My parents, FFILs and FH and I are all paying for the wedding. I made my list into the must invite, family, the friends who will be in the wedding and my parents few friends, which is about half our list. The rest are friends of mine, some I haven't seen in a few years but speak to weekly. We did sit down with my FH list and half of his list is just family. And I know we can't cut out is family but his list of 'maybes' was meet with resistance. FH has said that he would have a 500 person wedding in his grandpa's field, so he feels the 300 person wedding is limited his guest list.

Knottie_22382102

wow that's more people than I know, I think!  I'd go through and start marking people down to cut it down. Plan on 100% attendance.

I have a group of about 10 people in one circle that I'd like to invite but may not be able to because that puts us 10 over what we can afford. There's about 6-10 people who we know will most likely not attend bc of proximity...so I'm sending their invites first and will prob hear back right away and will just send out the other 10 invites based on that. It's not really a B list... they'll go out within 2 weeks of each other.

gailpete

I would start with diviiding the list in thirds.  Your parents get 100 people, you and Fi get 100 and his parents get 100.  (To me it is more important to have a friend that you or FI are close rather than second cousin Erma that FI hasn't seen in 10 years.)  Once each group has their list of 100 you can sit down and figure out  where the overlaps are and if there are any "must haves" that aren't on one of the 3 lists.