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Although people say to estimate that about 10% of your invites will respond "no", I would rather play it safe than sorry, as long as you send your invites out early enough you can invite your 50 "B" list people as soon as you get 50 "no's". You just wouldn't want to have a situation (thouh highly unlikely) where EVERYONE says yes (lucky you!) and then there isn't enough room for them.
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Are you getting married in your town? What percentage of your guests are from out of town? I really wouldn't invite the max. Honestly, there is nothing worse than being packed into a church. Pews are not exactly the most comfortable anyway, but pack everybody in there and people will want to kill each other. What is the total number of your guest list as of right now?
I would bet that you would be safe to invite 400, but does the church have a balcany or another space that people would be able to sit and at least listen to the ceremony? Not that you want your guests to not see you get married, but if you do invite everyone and everyone comes, make sure you have some sort of a back up plan.
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I am getting married in my hometown...
I agree with being packed into a church - our guest list is at about 148 right now -- but, I know we are far from being done.
I like the idea about the "b" list option, I never thought of that...
I personally hate the idea of a B list, just because I would be afraid to upset somebody. Is 350 max the whole church or just the floor? Our church, which we didn't marry in because it's so big!, seats around 500 total including balconies(2) and a little side room with limited views. We also have a chapel that they stream live tv into for funerals, etc. Crazy, huh? Anyway, my point is count ALL THE SPACE. :) I would stick to the max number, whatever it might be. Then when you have people regret, you'll have some breathing room for all the people who are there and they will thank you!
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With a guest list that big, you are likely to have more than 10% regrets, I believe. Also, are you having a big wedding party? If you, have, say, six on each side, then there are fifteen people up there not taking up pew space. And I actually think there's a lot to be said for a crowded church....feels nicer (in my opinion) than an empty one.
So I'd think you'd be okay w/ the big list.
happymnbride,
The B-List option may be a good one to think about. You can avoid upsetting anyone by sending out invitations a bit earlier than usual. Once declines start coming in, you can start sending out invitations to the B-List.
The only catch with this is that you may not want to send out Save The Dates because you cannot anticipate how many people and which on the B-List will actually get the invitation. It's not a good idea to send someone an STD and not send them an invitation.
The risk of inviting 50 more people is that you don't get as many declines as you would like and you get more acceptances. You will be stuck in a rut if you cannot acommodate all of these people due to the restrictions of a venue. The worst thing is to have guests arrive from all over and not be permitted inside the ceremony or reception. Don't risk it.
By going the route of the B-List, you save yourself from this.
Our guest list was 250 and 121 are coming to the wedding. We had a feeling some would not say yes due to the rising cost of gas and airline tickets, so we took a gamble and overinvited for a room that only held 140. So I guess my advice is to look at your guest list, the time and date of your wedding, and other factors (such as location) and determine the odds yourself.
Just so you know, we had a blist and were able to invite everyone on there! So it's not the worst thing in the world to do, as long as you give them plenty of time to respond so that they know that they weren't on the blist (like KateMW says, that would be terrible). Just FYI, we have about a 25% decline rate for what will be an out-of-town wedding for most guests.
I'm going to buck the trend here and say just invite them. Its only 50 people. I invited 260 and I have 160 coming. You can probably count on at least 10% no's, and they say you can usually do 20%.
Look through the list to get a comfort level, but there must be like 50 people you don't think are coming right? Try to come up with a worst case scenario plan so you can sleep at night, but I can't imagine all 400 will come.
We had this same issue with our venue. We decided to not have a B list and just invite the max # of people that the venue holds. I think it depends on how "tight" your list it.
For example after sending out S.T.Dates, out of 150 invitees, we only had 8 (4 couples) that are not coming so far.
But I would think with a bigger guest list that you would have a bigger amount of people not be able to make it.
It's possible if you look at your guest list you can sort of predict who is not coming anyway. Plus, I would say that with that big of a list, you will get better than 20% declining. I was pretty nervous about the size of our list, so we sat down and figured out how many people really were doubtful - elderly aunts and uncles with health issues who can't travel, out of state friends and family with lots of kids (travel expense), those cousins who never attend anything... you know. We had a few surprises in our responses, but we did predict pretty well who would come and who wouldn't. Plus, we had people respond to tell us they couldn't attend after the STDs were sent - before we even sent invitations (people who had already booked vacation cruises, etc for that time period).
You can still send STDs if you have an A and a B list - just only send them to the A list. We didn't have a formal B list - but we did have a few people we weren't sure about inviting, so we didn't send them STDs. They were all local, and weren't great friends with anybody else on the guest list, so I don't think it really mattered.
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This may be an odd question...but, hopefully someone has the answer!
My fiance and I are working on our guest list. We are having a BIG wedding and the church can hold 350 ppl at the max. Is it safe to invite say 50 people over (400) or should we invite EXACTLY as much as the Church can fit?
If this question is confusing, please send me a PM. Any advice would be great!