Make wedding size smaller

Yes, it is. People will have already marked your date on their calendars and will be expecting an invitation. The only way around it is to either elope or let people know you've had to downsize and they didn't make the cut.

Huge no no. Save the dates are as binding as actual formal invitations. People will think (correctly) that they are invited.

You have a few choices.

Cancel the original wedding and scale it way back, like immediate family only

Elope

Disinviting people is really rude and you'll risk hurting so many people you know.

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I second this. You can't really get out of this unscathed unless you cancel the current plans, downsize drastically to family and at most a handful of others, or eloping.

I mean, you can. But it's likely you will hurt a lot of feelings and have a lot of uncomfortable conversations. How would you feel if you were uninvited to a wedding because they changed their mind about you mid-plan? Yikes

I’m going to go against popular opinions and say no. You are looking at cutting your guest list by more than half. Is that “small” no, but it’s a huge difference and will 100% change the scale of wedding you’ll have. It’s not like you’re skipping over one or two families. You can simply tell the ones you have cut that you scaled back and cut the guest list. Might hurt some feelings, but I think you’ll be ok.

I was someone who was cut when a wedding got downsized! It was fine. Granted this was in 2020 so there were obviously some other concerns there as well... You definitely have to reach out to each and every one though and let them know. Otherwise, yes you are absolutely going to hurt some feelings

A lot of people had to do this in the lasts few years, Zazzle, etsy, most printing companies have some form of notice like this:

I personally wouldn't get offended if I received something like this, but I'd be upset if I didn't receive anything.

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much! Yes, of course we plan to send a notice just didn’t know how to write it…


Thank you!!!

View Quoted Comment Yes… my goal is to communicate thoroughly.


Thanks for your honesty!!!

View Quoted Comment Yeah… I feel all the emotions coming from certain people. In all honesty the “new” list is my family, my fiancés family and a hand full of close friends.

View Quoted Comment I would understand because I get how expensive weddings are🙃

View Quoted Comment Right. Our goal was to elope in Paris but wanted our family to see us married here.

View Quoted Comment Yes, eloping is our goal just wanted family and close friends see us get married here.

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That's fair, but how could you get to the point of sending out invitations without having a budget? That's just silly. You should invite how many people you're able and willing to host, which requires a budget to begin with.

View Quoted Comment Yeah… I forgot to add we sent save the dates via email. My fiancé is a graphic designer. So we did it that way. Cost us nothing.


We had money that was taken back last minute. 🙂

Is this a big no no? YES. It goes completely against wedding etiquette to send a save the date to someone, then not invite them. Covid was an exception to this rule because venues were not allowing people to invite more than a handful of guests (nor was it safe to do so), so people were FORCED to downsize (not simply changing their minds about who or how many people they wanted to invite). This would be incredibly rude and tacky.

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That's not eloping then. You're still having a wedding.

Agree with Jacks. Eloping is only the two of you, and maybe parents as witnesses. What it’s changing to is technically not an elopement, and is likely to cause lots of hurt feelings due to the fact that it’s not a reduction you were forced into due to emergency health policies or a natural disaster like the venue you booked burned to the ground and you can’t book another that size in time.


Ashlee’s suggested card would be a good start, but be prepared for a range of reactions from people.

Agree with Jacks and Erin. An elopement is not a reduction to 75 people. It's you, your partner, and 2 witnesses. It will look like you cut your B list (125 ppl) for a non-emergency reason. Send out the cancellation card right away and expect hurt feelings as it's 5 months away.

Honestly, you can do whatever you want, but as most others have said, it would be really rude to uninvite or ghost guests that received save the dates (they will ask you about it!!). If you are ok with potential awkwardness, it may be worth it if the budget changed. You shouldn’t go into financial ruin to afford the wedding.


Here are some other options you may want to consider:- Wait to get married (then you give yourself more time to save for the wedding you want with the guest list size you originally included).- Get married privately and then have the big wedding later.- Switch your wedding expectations to fit your budget without cutting the guest list (you should expect about 70-80% of guests to show up, so you won’t have to be paying for all 200, but consider a less formal event.- Switch the location to become destination (Especially if selecting something overseas, you should expect less than half to show up. We just got married in Scotland in July, and half of our invited guest list showed, which was nice given they all came from US and Australia. If you want to get married in the US, consider Puerto Rico. Making the wedding less attainable to guests will eliminate those who don’t matter, but may not work for folks with mobility issues.
Anyway, good luck with it, but I think uninviting guests is going to be difficult if you choose that path. So if you do, have a plan and stick to it. A wedding is something to be celebrated, you might not want the negative attention.