guest list woes

cbear215

we are having our ceremony at our reception site, and planning on it being outdoors.  i know that i have to plan for indoors and my notes from my venue meeting indicate that indoors is 200 max.  well i just spoke to venue coordinator and he says max is 180.  our guest list is at 245 right now!!  how are we going to cut 65 people?!! I KNOW that this will only cause nightmares in the end, but i'm tempted to just cut it down to 200 and hope that it won't rain and/or that 20 people will rsvp no, lol.  we're obviously not going to do that but this is going to be tough.

chilover27

We are inviting 190 but do not want to go over 150! If we do we do but I'm secretly hoping that 40 people do not come!

LDubHawksFan

I'm having trouble with our guest list too....it keeps growing!  Honestly, a lot of my family is coming cross country, but I'm the first to get married, so a lot are coming.  Then we got into our friends, and we originally thought there would be a 70% rate of people coming, but the BM was talking to my FI this weekend and said, they are all a bunch of 30 yr olds with money and mostly without kids....he expected more like 95%!  Yikes.  Our list is now around 140, and we were hoping like 110, although I couldn't imagine not inviting any of these people! 
OP, I would be a little worried about over inviting if there is a strict number you can't exceed.  I'm not sure what the weather is like in Boston in Oct, but I live in So Cal, it barely rains that early, and I'm still having a weather back up.

trawas01

Ugh. Ours started under 100. Now we at 115. We can do 115. We can. But it will make the whole budget tighter then I'd like.

I just keep telling myself that all the guests live 600 miles away, they can't all decide to come, right??

ap142193

We plan to stagger our invites so that we can mark off those who are not comming via RSVP.  Our list is close to 300, but we can only have 150.

brainybrunette

Our guest list is much larger than we originally planned too.  Our venue is HUGE and hold up to 500 people, so the 265 that we invited won't be a "too many guests for the venue" problem.  I know that the average decline rate is 20%, so I'm hoping that this will bring the number down closer to 200.  Also, we invited a lot of out of town guests that I know won't come and we gave people + 1's that I know won't bring one.  So, hopefully in the end we'll be under 200 guests...150-175 was the original plan : /

lepoissonrouge

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-club-boards_october-2012-weddings_guest-list-woes?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding Club BoardsForum:56b9bcef-1e34-456e-81f5-cfaa107456b2Discussion:54ec7e46-0526-4675-88d7-9c45c01841c1Post:325125de-5a1a-4055-8316-ffd9b95018c6">Re: guest list woes</a>:
[QUOTE]Our guest list is much larger than we originally planned too.  Our venue is HUGE and hold up to 500 people, so the 265 that we invited won't be a "too many guests for the venue" problem.  I know that the average decline rate is 20%, so I'm hoping that this will bring the number down closer to 200.  Also, we invited a lot of out of town guests that I know won't come and we gave people + 1's that I know won't bring one.  So, hopefully in the end we'll be under 200 guests...150-175 was the original plan : /
Posted by Nic12184[/QUOTE]

This is exactly how we are... our venue is HUGE, it will seat 500 (minus some because of creating room for a dance floor). And I did that on purpose because I knew we'd have a pretty big crowd and I wasn't sure of exact numbers. But just because we have that much room obviously does not mean we need that many people. Right now I think we are at almost 200 people that we are inviting, at least 50 of which we really don't expect to come because of their age and the travel it would require. What I am really worried about is how many people from my church will show up... When people get married at the church (usually, it is of course up to each couple) we'll just put a general invitation in the bulletin and then still expect RSVPs from that. So I have no way of know how many will actually come. I have gone to that church and been very very involved in that church since I was a baby, and it makes me a little nervous that they will all show up... So I am trying to be as prepared as I can.

BrittneyRN

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-club-boards_october-2012-weddings_guest-list-woes?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20Club%20BoardsForum:56b9bcef-1e34-456e-81f5-cfaa107456b2Discussion:54ec7e46-0526-4675-88d7-9c45c01841c1Post:d299a48b-375b-4542-b1c9-d154c8bfb107">Re: guest list woes</a>:
[QUOTE]We plan to stagger our invites so that we can mark off those who are not comming via RSVP.  Our list is close to 300, but we can only have 150.
Posted by ap142193[/QUOTE]

Do you mean B list inviting? Please don't do this, as it's very rude to the people who didn't make the original list.

huskerfan246

I am having my ceremony outdoors at the same location as well, my guest list is at 155 right now, not including if anyone brings children (which I hope not but I don't want to be rude and tell them no).  Our Max Occupancy is 170, but then have a covered deck right outside the banquet room that will have tables set up for people who might want to sit outside.  I  know there will be people who wont' make it, but i'm hoping that I don't end up with a situation where I have it too full in the banquet room and have to make some of our guests sit outside, even if they don't want to.  I wasn't planning on having this large of a guestlist, originally planned around 125-130, but it just kind of evolved over the last couple months. 

violakat03

We already sent out STDs and we're already starting to get back lash from those that didn't get one. We only sent them to the "for sure"s and so there are a lot of somewhat distant friends that are friends with people who got STDs and are now whining about not getting one themselves. I'm not looking forward to dealing with that with the actual invites. We have a HUGE circle of friends and are only inviting the closest ones, and we're still about 25 people over what we had as our target invite number. We planned 175 invites, hoping for 150 attending. We're at about 200 invites now. We may have to cut some of those that didn't get STDs.

DeannaCW

We had put our guesstimates for venue hunting at 150-160.  We just counted up our total invite list, and have 228 adults and 16 kids.  Thank goodness he's not close with his extended family, lot of them not bothering to come (from Malta/England).  And that's after we wrote two of his aunts off after their response to some of the stuff we said around them!  Our estimates are probably still about right at least.  But venue only holds 200 if we want a dance floor, 250 without, hopefully we won't have to put any tables on the patio!

nani1012

I was planning on having 100 people coming to the wedding. It is a DW and most of my cousins have kids (no kids are invited). But we did get a couple of cousins (who I dont see or talk to) whined about not getting a STD and we ended up adding a few for both sides. We're now at 150. The venue can hold 170, but if everyone shows up the budget will be tighter than planned.

cbear215

It sounds like everyone is having a problem with their guest list!!  I'll be so glad when invites go out because that will mean list is FINAL.  The thing that sucks is that the reception max capacity is 300-350, which holds plenty of our guests.  And if we do it outside (which is the plan), our guest list also won't be a problem.  The only problem would be if we have to do it inside and only for the ceremony. oh well, it'll work out for all of us somehow, I'm sure!
and violakat, we got backlash on people not getting std's on our side too.  honestly, now i wish we hadn't even done them.