I have seen various posts about people over-inviting because they expected a smaller turnout, and I have seen posters pile on the OP and dish out the ridicule. I welcome advice and constructive feedback but not ridicule—I am painfully aware of my blunder and sorely regret it. That said:
I fell in love with a set of venues, one for the ceremony and one for the reception, and decided to grab those while we could. We’re having a destination wedding of sorts in Las Vegas and are discovering that my side of the family has more people eager to attend than expected, despite most coming from the other side of the country. I sent save-the-dates so that those far-flung people would have plenty of time to get time off from work and book travel arrangements. Now it sounds like every one of them will respond positively to an invitation when the time comes, thus exceeding the capacity of our church and possibly our reception space. We’re considering 1) restricting the ceremony to close family and the wedding party, assuming the reception venue will still be big enough; 2) scrapping the ceremony and just having the reception with the same caveat, and 3) scrapping both venues and gambling on starting over with a shortened timeline. Has anyone else out there made this mistake and recovered? How did it go? Again, constructive feedback, please and thank you.