New York-Long Island

Invite question! Help please!

my venue has a 220 person max, but there's about 40 more people we'd like to invite if enough people rsvp that they can't make it. This seemed simple enough at first to us but now we've got these two lists, the A list and the B list. How should we do our invitations RSVP by dates? Also, I think my bridal shower is going to be the month before the wedding.. do I end up not inviting the B list people to the bridal shower? It's a shame cause the A list has ALOT of my FI family that MIL insisted on inviting even though they probably won't come and B list has alot of MIL friends who would def want to come and would also want to come to the bridal shower. What do I do?!

Re: Invite question! Help please!

  • edited December 2011
    You cannot invite people to your shower that are not definitely invited to your wedding. If there's even a slight chance you won't be able to give them a wedding invite you have to leave them off.

    Personally, I'm completely anti B-list and would suggest you don't even go that route, but that's MHO. I'm not sure how you should figure out the RSVP date either, you're going to have to send out way in advance with your first wave to have time for a second.
  • edited December 2011
    yeah...i invited the same people to the wed as i did to my shower. i think that's some sort of rule...lol anyway, i'm in fla and getting married in LI so i over invited b/c i knew people weren't going to travel. maybe there's people you invited on the a-list you know that won't come and you can still invite from the b-list? just an idea:-) good luck!!
  • edited December 2011
    Don't over-invite, ever. Your venue has a max and you never actually know if people will or won't come before they RSVP. My mom told me tons of ppl wouldn't come and only 1 so far has said they won't be able to make it. You have to plan for "what if" so you're not screwed at the end.
  • edited December 2011
    Really? I know a lot of people who got married and over invited. I guess if it's a destination wedding like mine people tend to know who's definitely not going to come. Over inviting worked out for me, but I totally understand people that don't:-)
  • edited December 2011
    I agree that you shouldn't over invite.  People often get surprised at the way people respond- you never know who will say yes or no.  I had a "B list", which were mostly a few coworkers.  They understood that family had to come first, and although we expected several long distance relatives to decline, we had to do the right thing and invite them and wait for their reply without assuming.  After the declines were definite, we invited the B-listers.  If you do it in a timely fashion so it's not obvious that the B-listers are, well, B-listers, it shouldn't be a huge deal.  Some knotties have suggested putting the RSVP date on the bottom so that you can chop it off with a paper cutter for the second round of invites.  If you're printing your own, you can simply reprint with new info.
  • AmandalovesAlAmandalovesAl member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Why would you want to invite people that you don't want on your "A" list? I just don't get this.
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  • edited December 2011
    Don't do a b-list.  They're incredibly rude.  Invite what your venue can hold, and no more.
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  • edited December 2011
    We invited 244. Our venue holds 220 max!

    My FI has 25 people from Europe and we knew only about 10 would come and we had other people that we knew couldn't make it. We ended up with 184.
  • Jacklyns22Jacklyns22 member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    I was in a similar boat.  We invited way over the venue maximum but had a lot of invites going to Europe so we knew the declines would be more than the expected 15% that most people go by.  To save my sanity...because you never can know until you get some rsvps... I kept a few invites back.  Not a B-list per se since I didn't wait for all the rsvps to come back, just waited long enough to get some feedback from guests.  People who can't make it seem to rsvp much more quickly so you can send out the other invitations in waves as you get a better feel for what the numbers are. Just make sure the people who get the invites after the initial send out are in different circles and won't know.  Also, you would want to send your first invitations out earlier than the suggested 6 week mark. Hope that helps...
  • edited December 2011
    Set up an earlier RSVP date for the A-list and track it; as you get enough declines, you can decide to invite B listers.  But this can get tricky; personally, I'd just make one list and invite those you want and if you don't have room for extras, then you simply don't.

    Do not invite those to the shower, etc., if you haven't already extended an invite for the wedding - it's rude and obnoxious otherwise.  If you can't straighten the matter in time because of your A and B list, then leave those folks out.
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