Help! Guest list is bigger than expected

My advice would be to talk to your venue to find out how many people they can accommodate because you should always plan for everyone you invite to attend. You may have to update your contract if they can accommodate your actual guest count. This is why I always recommend creating a guest list before booking a venue that way you actually know how many people you are inviting.

Definitely do not invite more than your venue can accommodate.

Lol! This was our exact situation! We initially only wanted 60-70 people.... signed a contract for 75… And then kept adding people and I got up to 110! We then cut down some of the nonessentials and we got down to 93! Honestly though… Don’t let that number intimidate you. I’ll talk with your venue and see how much they are willing to accommodate. Also… There’s got to be people that you have a new guest list that may RSVP now. Hardly ever does anyone get 100% attendance. Obviously people RSVPing with regrets is not something that you want to count on, but it is a reality, and from my experience so far it’s usually family members that will give their regrets, friends will always make it and are down to go.… It’s only been 2 family members on my FH side that have had regrets(his cousin and his cousin‘s wife).. but I’m still waiting for more to come in. If you are able to go over that 70 threshold, I wouldn’t worry too much about it…Just talk to your venue.

Never invite more than your venue can fit. Decide who you can't imagine the day without and cut the rest. 100% attendance does happen more than you think but in a pandemic, you may have many declines. Do not have a B list though because people do find out they were your second choice.

Cut any obligatory invites: the ones you are only inviting to please other people but you aren't close to. Cut random stranger plus ones for your single guests. Significant others in relationships are automatic invites. Cut the people you haven't talked to since grade school/high school/college. Cut parents' friends and coworkers you are not close to. Children are all or none, including infants, so don't have a flowergirl and say all other kids are unwelcome.

Can your venue accommodate more that the 70 you originally estimated? If not, I would remove anyone you haven't seen or talked to in "X" number of years (say 5 years or whatever makes sense to you), anyone you're inviting out of obligation but don't really care if they come, and potentially children (but that's a personal choice and an all or none situation).

I’d***** not I’ll lol fkn auto correct

View Quoted Comment Our venue can hold a max of 200, we are just having a small wedding. Would that be a problem

View Quoted Comment Our venues maximum is 200. Our wedding is just small

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You have to talk to the venue. Many venues have capacities of 200 or 300 in non pandemic times but state regulations may only allow 50 max.

View Quoted Comment Our venue max is 200. Our wedding is small

I would talk with the venue for sure to see if they can up your guest count. How ever if you haven’t sent STD of invites yet there is still time to downsize the list. As other people said take a good look and imagine your day and who see there. I made the mistake of not making it clear about kids and my count went up when some family started to rsvp with kids. Just talk with venue 🥰😁

What we did is tell everyone that we would do a Facebook Live feed of the entire ceremony and reception, and put out a message that unfortunately, due to space limitations and Covid restrictions, we could only have X people attending in person, but we love you all so much and want you to be part of our special day. People will either be ok with it or they won't, but it's YOUR wedding, after all. You could always arrange a larger get-together at a local restaurant or something to celebrate with the people who couldn't be there in person.

We had to cut our guest list from over 100 to under 50 due to Covid. Before we booked we agreed on a guest count of 35. Well, after booking our venue our list has increased to over 40. We have until 10 days before our wedding to provide the final numbers and are still within the covid restrictions.