Weddingbee boards
very ruthless. :) if they're not one of my go-to people or within the tight circle of my go-to people, they didn't get invited. no current / former colleagues on my side - i'd rather have my friends! no +1 unless they are seriously dating / married, basically the people who are invited are the ones that i'd be upset if i never saw/ heard from them again.
btw, the whole a list b list thing didn't really work for us - not unless you're planning on 2 sets of rsvp response cards. most people don't respond until the due date itself, if at all.
our wedding is also 1/2 way around the world (literally) from our extended families so we knew that there were going to be a lot of nos and knew who those would likely be. we thought 80 would show up from the people we sent invites to. our headcount currently stands at ~75 (deadline was 8/1)
Not very ruthless ;) I'm too nice and I didn't want to upset anyone so I gave every one a +1. I wanted 80-100 guests, we invited 161. My RSVP due date was yesterday and right now I'm sitting at 83 confirmed with about 20+- more possibly coming. Not too bad but I probably lucked out with all the OOT guests, I knew a lot of them wouldn't come.
I'm ruthless, he's not. If I don't talk to you on a semi-regular basis and if I do not have your phone number, you are not coming. Bridesmaids and some out of town guests get plus ones, that's it.
On the other hand, he needs to invite his best friend from third grade that he hasn't seen in 15 years AND the parents of this best friend. I won't complain because his parents are paying for most of our wedding, but I certainly hope that his random guests politely decline. We are capped at 100, and over 130 are invited. I have no choice but to be ruthless.
We invited people we talk to often. For us, this meant all of our close friends. It was pretty easy for us to draw a line between close friends and not-so-close, no problems there at all. I'm really really close with my entire dad's side of the family, so they ALL got invites, while none of my mom's side will be invited because I haven't seen/talked to any of them since I was 16. Plus they're crazy anyway. On my FI's side, almost all of his extended family was invited, but we drew the line at some that he doesn't really know. If they ahdn't met me, that was kind of a dealbreaker too. My parents didn't get any friend invites, his mom got a few but we knew them well.
So I guess we were pretty ruthless :) But both of our sets of parents were supportive of this. The lowest we could bring ourselves was inviting about 150 total. I would have loved to go lower, but we cut a lot as it was.
I was very ruthless. we had multiple cutting the list sessions and one fight with my mother. I have a big family, who I'm close with, but my venue only holds 110 (on purpose, i want a small wedding). If you're not a first cousin, aunt, or uncle then you're not in. And you have to be extremely good friends. I really don't feel bad about it, it's making my life so much easier!
Pretty ruthless. Our wedding will be small - 50 guests. We had to really stick to that since we are planning an outdoor ceremony, and our rain "back-up" can only <span style="font-size: 7.5pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;">accommodate 50 people. I'd hate to invite more and have to use the rain back up and tell some of the guests "Oh, by the way, thanks for traveling so far but you can't come to the wedding. See you at the reception!".
I'm sure you guys will work it out! Having an "A" list and "B" list is definitely a good starting point 
Pretty ruthless, to be honest. I wanted less than one hundered people (preferably no more than 75 but we will see). So I cut all adult cousins, high school friends I hadn't seen in a year, etc. I was lucky that my mom was super supportive in keeping it as small as we could. Neither of our parents gave us "their" lists of people to invite either so that made it easier!
Never thought of myself as ruthless, but I suppose I am.
I only want people at my wedding I really care about. For the ones I wasn't sure if I should include or not, I used the "do I know their b'day" rule. If I know when their b'day is, and I celebrate it, they are in. If I don't - they don't qualify.
Immediate family, of course, and life-long family friends that are more of an obligation, but I couldn't imagine not having them present.
FI did the same thing, and while his list is smaller than mine, we ended up with a range of 161-190 (the list is still in flux).
Very ruthless. We only invited people that we talk to on a regular basis. Not many got plus ones if they weren't married/living together/engaged.
We are doing a semi B list. We didn't send STD's out to his work people, so, as horrible as it sounds, once I get 10 no's back, I'm sending out invites to his work people. Thank gosh I not overly friendly with any of them!
Basically we didn't invite anyone that upon sight we didn't remember their name.
very ruthless. at first we only wanted 125-150 guest. we were very selective with our guestlist. we invited all family and the rest are good friends, people we both have known for along time, and friends we grew up with and we are at 190 guests. but we are still leaving out a big chunk of people we both still talk to, but not very close with.
I wanted a very, very small wedding. We invited all family - aunts, uncles, first cousins. We only invited friends who had known us both, together. This made for a pretty tight guestlist -- meaning, no old college friends who had met him once, etc.
If I were inviting old friends I keep in loose contact with because I wanted a bigger celebration, or because I wanted to share my new life with old friends (valid reasons I can think of doing it) I don't know what criteria I'd use. Probably just whether we "talk": you know, not just chat or smalltalk, but really have an interest in each other's life.
I hate to say this, but you're dreaming with a $10k budget. Reality: $10k will be enough for 40-50 guests. Unless you do a super casual reception ie; nix flowers, cake and punch, etc. Then you can have your 180+ guests.
Our budget was $10k (granted we are getting married in so california) It is costing closer to $14k and I cut flowers and am a DIY queen.
SO ruthless. We are only having about 25 people to our wedding so it was just immediate family members and then friends who are so close they are pretty much family. It was really hard to draw the lines, even two couples we hang out with a lot and are very close to weren't invited, but they totally understand. We really had to be strict about where to draw the line, because once one cousin is invited, or one friend from college, its like "well, what about ___ and ____?" and it gets crazy!!!!
I might have him look at these responses. This is exactly what I think too. He has people on there like family friends he hasn't seen in 6 years. I doubt they'd come anyway 800 miles anyway!
But seriously, I'm ready to be ruthless; he still doesn't have a handle on how expensive weddings are. I'm in one this weekend, maybe I will ask the groom to call boyfriend on mmonday to break their expenses down!
Thanks!
we have to be ruthless because we told the venue 80 and so, literally, the ceremony spot will only be able to fit 80. There are about 97 on our A list, and then we have a few on a B list but they will only get an invite after we have 20 no's in already. The only +1's are spouses or engaged, and they all happen to be people we already know anyway.
Very Ruthless!
We actually did it backwards from the way most people do their guest list!
We said we wanted to have 50 people and we were adamant that everyone could bring a guest because guest enjoyment was really important to us. 50 didn't work out to an even number for both of us so we went to 52 so that meant we had 26 people each which worked out to 13 invites with their +1's each!
After I named my 13 and he named his 13 we thought about whether their were other people that we HAD to have with us and the answer was no - this really covered the really important people in our lives at the moment! I can't wait it is going to be so intimate and personal!
@<poli2b - I agree with you! CHK I don't know how you are going to do that large number of guests with 10,000! If you do it please fill me in on cost saving tips!
With my 50 person guest list our budget sits at just over 12,000 and that is going with deals and the cheap route of doing things and I don't live in a huge expensive city!
I've been really anal about this... our families have like 300+ and I only want between 100 and 150 ... 150 would be the perfect number. We cut out most of our extended family ...
My fsil tried adding 17 people and I cut it in half ...
@CHK I think you can totally do the 10K :) We'll be sitting at about 10K when all is said and done and we're having 130-150 guests total. In a church, reception at a local restaurant, the whole thing. It can definitely be done, just depends on the area and what you're willing to sacrifice!
Well hopefully I can wear my grandmothers dess, with alterations that she can do. She's a fantastic seamstress. And If I can convince boyfriend, we'll get married at my parents lake house, so no venue fee!!!
Thanks everyon!
I made a list that didn't include all my coworkers that I'd want to invite and I forgot alot of people after the fact and it was still 135 people! His side won't have nearly that many, but I only wanted about 100 TOTAL so this was a total bummer. I'm going to have to make A lists and B lists and exclude the families bad children (I was going to put them in the nursery anyway!)...
We've actually had very few issues with the guest list thus far, and our goal of 60-75 guests has been going pretty smoothly. We have allowed every 'single' guest a +1, and of course, married/dating people plus their SO were invited. I think for us, it was the mixed blessing of it being a destination for about 85 percent of the guests.
Very ruthless. I've invited 49 which is a few more than originally planned. Partly because one of my friends is involved in a "triad" situation so he has 2 SOs. We have about 14-15 people who we predict will not come at all- FI's godparents and some Aunts & Uncles, etc. We want to have a trolley take everyone to the ceremony site and then to the reception and it can only hold 33 people, so we are maxed out right now and crossing our fingers that we are predicting correctly! I CAN"T add anyone else!
Not ruthless enough. My silly friends all think they are invited and I can't tell them no.
Fairly ruthless. They had to be people we both knew or at least both knew ABOUT. FMIL tried to put her sister's best friend from school on her list. Apparently her and Mr Moo are very very distantly related (so far off the tree you'd need extra pages for the branches!). I had no idea who this woman was. She had to be put on the "if we have a few no's list". I still don't know who this woman is. Also people only got +1's if they were married/engaged/in a relationship.
Our first rule was that if we hadn't seen them since we've been dating they were out. Of course then we started getting invited to random family parties and that blew that rule out on a technicality. Then we made it that if we wouldn't hang out with them, or have dinner at their house they were out- but that made our guest list too small to find a reception hall that would accommodate, so we opened it back up. Now we are only inviting up to aunts and uncles (no cousins unless they are young, or if we are very close). Most of his cousins are closer to his parent's age than ours, a lot of them have kids, and some of their kids have kids- so that would have added a TON of people. As far as +1 we limited it to adults (nobody under college age) only, but I have heard that a lot of people aren't taking advantage of the +1 anyway, so you might be ok there.
Best wishes!
Ruthless - We arent having our first argument as a married couple be the bill for the wedding. In fact, we are paying everything cash & I am not about to pay $100 plus for someone who only seems to peak their head when there's a free meal to be got (i.e. distant relatives) I explained early on to my parents ( although we are footing the bill) that only my family and first cousins/aunts would be invited. nothing beyond that and fh only has about 8 people in his family (including second cousins) so his family totally got in. I am only inviting close family and four girlfriends. We are contracted for 75 guests.
Hey, to all the people who said you can't do that many people for $10K, they are totally wrong! It just takes some innovation and research. We have 110 people, for right under $10K. We could have has as many as 140 and still stayed within budget, but a lot of people couldn't make it.
Any, I was suepr lucky, and didn't have to be ruthless. I have a small family, and my fiance's family is holding a second reception up North for us, so they don't all have to come down. There were people I kind of wanted to invite, but didn't, but it was more because of just not really wanting them there, not to keep the ##s down.
We have four guests coming to our elopement. Pretty ruthless, I'd say ;-)
We wanted to keep our guest list small for many reasons. We ensured that it would be below a number we wanted by booking a venue that would only hold (at maximum capacity) 120 people. We did this first, even before talking to parents about guest lists because we were paying and wanted to keep a handle on the list.
We really limited our list in terms of family and friends. For family, we included parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and first cousins ONLY. We didn't add any extra family members, so there was a clear cut-off on both sides. My mom has 40 first cousins, so if we had extended out even another level, it would have probably tripled our numbers. For friends, we included only our very closest/oldest friends. We didn't include coworkers, aquaintances, or many HS/college friends. We basically asked ourselves if we had seen/spoken to the people within the last 3 months. We didn't include people just because we had attended their wedding, because several of those people had very large weddings. For parents, we allowed his parents to have one table of their closest friends and didn't include their coworkers, friends kids, etc. If we hadn't capped this, I think my MIL would have invited 300 people herself! My mom didn't request any friends to be invited, so that helped, too. Actually, because my husband and I paid, we never really let anyone else give us people's names to add to the guest list. We made the list and showed it to our parents for approval, but never actually requested names from them. This way, we were in control the entire time. Finally, we didn't invite anyone under the age of 16, so there were no children invited.
Incidentally, we were able to invite all single people with a guest because we kept the guest list so much smaller. Of the 117 people we invited, our final attendee list was 86--including 3 vendors, my husband and me. Most if not all of the single folks decided to attend without dates.
We're just now starting to put a guest-list together and FI and I are being very ruthless...it's the mothers who aren't! We are definitely going to have to tell them NO on alot of people. We're hoping for right at 100...and right now our list is at 120 without my mother's list. Lovely.
I feel like I'm being the opposite of ruthless! BUT most of my friends live either halfway across the country or halfway around the world from our hometown, where we'll be getting married even though I haven't lived there since high school, and J hasn't lived there since college. I'm hoping that by inviting everyone, at least SOMEONE will come! Fortunately for me, J has a pretty short list of friends (although a stinkin' big family).
lol i'm another "not very ruthless."
we have been getting more "no's" than anticipated so really, I'm kinda digging into a "B" list at this point. Not to mention all my invites were at least +1's.
We have been extremely ruthless with ours! Its only our CLOSEST family and friends. 76 total including ourselves and the bridal party. We were not playing. I don't even like people really so I didn't want a bunch of people I don't socialize with at my wedding. I don't wanna be paying for dinner for people I don't even know or meeting them for the first time at my wedding...what the heck?
And on our RSVP's very nicely on the bottom we have "Please do not bring any extra or univited guests as they were not included in our seating or dinner count".
Simple as that...i don't bite my tongue.
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boyfriend and I are spreadsheeting a guest list for the wedding. We're going to use it to help us settle the where to get married debate (we're hoping to make it as cheap and painless for our guests as possible).
My dream wedding is 75-150 people, at the lake, low key and casual. Our budget is $10,000, although it might get cut since we're building a house this fall.
We're already at 258, without parents adding guests. If only 70% come, we're still at 180!!! I want to throw up.
We're ranking an A list and B list, as well as likelyhood of attending either location. I've brought up the +1 issue, and it blows his mind that you wouldn't give people a +1.
How ruthless have you been to get the numbers to where you wanted them or could afford them? What tools have you used?
If you've seen them in the last year?
If you have them in your cell phone?
If you can name their +1?