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I think this is a great case for A and B list, and sending your invites out a little sooner than you may have otherwise. I personally wouldn't take the chance on sending out 300 invites if you're hoping for 150, or send out 150 either. But I would send out 175 or 200 to begin with and then as "no"s come in, send out more invites. We also thought many people wouldn't be coming, but it seems like so far, many of those are surprising us and booking hotels!
Sending out 300 invites if your venue only holds 150 is a BAD idea. You may be praying for declines, and people will surprise you and you'll end up with WAY too many. Like eriqua said, create and A list and a B list. A list should consist of all YOUR close friends, your FI's close friends, and both of your close relatives, cutting out adult children you don't know. The B list should include people like your parents' friends and coworkers, more distant relatives, and anyone you don't know that well. Prioritize your B list, so that as you receive declines on the A list, you can send an invite out immediately from the B list.
You may be surprised at how many people will come to your wedding, and it's much easier to have too few people than too many!
(We had a few people we thought were definite declines, they ended up coming...we even had people attend who weren't even invited!)
Agree with pps - definitely don't invite 300 people if you only want 150 :) You may be surprised by how many of the in town people come, even if you don't know them. If you're looking for an easy way to trim the list, start by eliminating anyone that neither you nor your FI have ever met. That's easier said than done, especially if your parents are paying for or signficantly contributing to the cost of the wedding, but at the end of the day, it's your wedding, and if you're going to have to cut people, the ones that you don't know probably make the most sense.
Even if you don't plan to send A and B rounds of invitations, definitely organize your list of guests by priority. It also helps to group guests by relationship to each other so that you can see cases where if you invite one person from a particular group, you would want or need to invite all of the other people from that group. This helped me to see where it made the most sense to make cuts. Good luck!
Agreed - you can't count on that many declines! I also vote for the A and B lists.
I absolutely would not invite 300 people to a wedding space that can only hold 150 people.
We have A and B lists, but I don't think we will ever end up going to the B list. I think most people say that 20% of people will not RSVP yes to a wedding, but I personally think that % will be unique to each wedding and situations. If you have bigger families, more people will RSVP yes for example. The number of OOT guests will also influence the RSVP numbers. If you want to go by the 20% will RSVP no rule, you can expect 240 people to reply yes to your wedding!
In terms of cutting the guest list I would come up with a new list that is the "core" group of people. Meaning they have to be invited. For FI and I the core group of people were family (parents, grandparents, aunts, unlces and first cousins), a group of our closest friends, and a group of people that our parents felt absolutely had to be present (family friends). Keep in mind that you also have to feed vendors (usually in a seperate room) and that you should invite your officiant.
We have also cut back on numbers by not inviting children and single guests will not be allowed a plus one. Our rule is that a plus one is allowed if the person and SO have been dating more than a year.
From my experience the guest list is a royal pain in the butt. I have had possesion of the guestlist all along and refuse to hand it over to any parents :)
I agree with otthers, absolutely do not invite 300! As poster stated, general rule of thumg, expect about 20% to decline, in our case, we've had a LOT more unexpcted "yes", irregardless of whether they personally know us or the distance in travel, people just LOVE weddings!
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Ok ladies! Its a new week and Kare7213 has new posts and questions! Over the weekend me and my FI took a 2 hour trip on up to my parents house in West Michigan (which by the way is feeling like spring!) Well anywho, we went over our guest list. We have reached 300 people!! Our venue can only hold 150. Yikes! A famiy friend of ours said that we need to obviously cut our guest list in half. She said at her daughters wedding they invited 120 ppl and 100 showed. Thats only like 22% declines right? Well with 300 people and 22% declining we are looking at a 220 count guest list??? (Maybe, I'm wrong. Never was good at math) But this is where I'm stuck on what to do:
About 100 of our guests are from at least 2 hours away.
About 30 of those people I KNOW wont come.
And about another 20 of those people are from out of state and I also know they wont come.
The other 200 In-towners are friends of mostly my parents and people they work with, and some of them I've never even met. So I'm really thinking we are going to have alot more then 22% declining. So I'm wondering; Should I just keep my guest list and invite everyone so feelings dont get hurt and hope for what I'm expecting? Or invite only 150 ppl (which means most of the people I will be inviting will be from out of town and probably wont be able to make it) and risk having all of those out of towners not come and end up having a small wedding and wasting alot of money on a 150 person wedding. I hope you understand all this! Thanks again ladies!