Wedding Guest List: How Many People Don’t Come?
When planning your wedding and particularly looking at your wedding guest list, you may read that you should “invite 20% more people than you’d like to actually have at your wedding”. On average, I’d say approximately 17% of your guests will decline for one reason or another, but how do you know that you’re going to be the average???
photo by Crystal Satriano Photography
There are many factors that come into play when it comes to your guest list…
Time of year
Location of the wedding
Where friends and family are coming from
Holidays
Vacations
General personality of guests (maybe they’re just not “wedding people”)
All of those factors make it difficult to know just how many people you can expect to have at your wedding. If you’ve already chosen your venue, you know approximately how many people you can actually have at your wedding.
For example’s sake, let’s say your venue can comfortably hold 150. You do not want to invite more than 150 guests. Period.
When you are making your guest list, I highly recommend categorizing them by priority. Yes, I know it’s almost cruel and I don’t recommend Facebook-ing it, but it’s completely normal and justified. Use numbers, letters, basically anything that can be sorted. (If you don’t use Excel or some type of spreadsheet, I might just slap you)
Ok, so your list should be divided up into three categories.
List A: The list of people that you absolutely MUST invite.
List B: The list of people that you’d like to have there, but don’t NEED to have.
List C: The list of people that you do not need to invite, but would like to send an announcement.
Ok, let’s break down those lists a little bit more.
List A: This list should be the list of people that you absolutely MUST have at your wedding. They are close friends and close family members that you couldn’t imagine celebrating without. This list could be ten people or it could be 150; just make sure that whatever this number is is feasible with your venue. This list will all get an invitation to your wedding.
List B: This list is your list of people that you’d like to have at your wedding, as long as the budget and space will allow. This list can be broken down into further categories if you need, but it will likely contain co-workers, family friends, extended family, and maybe some former classmates. Some of these guests may be invited initially, but once you start receiving RSVPs, you’ll be able to start sending out invites to your remaining List B as needed.
List C: This list should contain those that you do not wish to invite to your wedding, but would like to send them a formal announcement of your marriage. They do not receive an invitation. The announcement is sent AFTER the wedding day.
If you are sending out more invites than your venue can hold, PLEASE be prepared for more yeses than you think. It might be unlikely, but it’s also important to note that it CAN happen. So by having two lists (or more), you can track your RSVPs and see who you’ll be able to add in towards the end when some of A-listers decline.
Make sense? Hope so.
