Who to invite to wedding?

We started by choosing our wedding party. Then we added our immediate families and close friends, expanded on our extended families and then opened the guest list to whomever my mom and dad want to invite (they're paying for everything).

We were paying for the entire wedding, our venue holds 150 max, I wanted 120 invited and possibly less would come. Once we were finalizing the list we wound up with 131 75% Fh side 25% mine, we asked our parents if they had anyone they wanted to invite and I am now at 150 invited . FH mother wanted many of her friends invited +19, in turn, she offered to pay the bar bill $4k. Honestly I don't want that many people, I wanted something smaller and more intimate, but it was important for FH, so I caved.

We started with my parents(who are paying) saying divining the list up by 50 (FILs have 50 spots to invite, my parents have 50, and we have 50) but the lines have kind of blurred now. It's really just our big families and who we are close too.

Dividing* can't edit on mobile

Our guest list, ideally, would have been 50/50 bride/groom side, but it's more like 40/60 bride/groom side. He just has more family located where the wedding is.

Our moms basically took over and invited everyone lol and I'm not joking. We went through and approved everything though and cut people where we had to so it wasn't an issue.

Out of our 330 guests that were invited, I'd say about 180 were family and the rest were friends.

Parents, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, First Cousins, and about 25 of me and FH friends. Total comes out to 80. I told my FH from the beginning I didn't want a big wedding and I'm not going to play guest list games with anyone.

Ours accidentally ended up being almost split 50/50. FH has a big family and I have a lot of family friends and friends I couldn't imagine not being there so it worked out.

I have more on my side than he has on his, which is surprising since he has a bigger immediate family. But, I'm much closer with my cousins, and my mom's cousins than he is with his.

FILs also invited more friends than my family liked, and so did FH, but I think it will all work out. (My family is paying for the venue/catering.)

We have:

22 wedding party and their SOs, plus parents of the flower girl, junior bridesmaid and ring bearer

36 my family

34 my family's friends

16 his family

19 his family's friends

25 our friends

6 us/our parents

A division of numbers was honestly never even discussed. My parents paid, so they were obviously inviting whoever they wanted, we asked my H's parents who they wanted to invite of their friends, and then H and I each made up our own lists for extended family and friends. We had the budget for everyone on all the lists, sooooo, that was that.

We both have small families so 80% of our guests are friends. We just both invited whoever we felt we couldn’t get married without. I’d say my fiancé has over half of the guest list on his side but it doesn’t bother me. We didn’t consult family as for guests they wanted to invite, if we aren’t close with someone they didn’t get invited. Otherwise the list would get out of control!

We started the guest list and it went like this:
FW family, my family, then we listed our must have friends. Since we have a long engagement we haven’t finalized the list because people will have new relationships and kids before we’re married. Most of the guest list is my FW family, she has a ton. We aren’t extending extra invites to our parents friends, our guest list is already big enough and if we’re close to them then they’re on the list. If we aren’t close then they don’t really need to be there

We started with our families first and our must have friends. My parents are paying for half of the wedding so they gave us some people they wanted to invite, but we do not want the guest list to get out of control because of cost. We are really trying to focus on the people in our lives that are important to us now to eliminate childhood friends we haven't spoken to or co-workers we don't see outside of work, that kind of thing.

I don't actually know what our division is. We both made a list of the people who had to be there, looked at our lists, eliminated the doubles (my roommate was on both our lists, etc.) and then decided we could live with that number, even though it was a bit higher then we had planned on.

I have a smaller family then FW, but her family is more spread out, but also more willing to travel then my small number of family whos oot, so in the end it will probably be fairly even.

We didn't extend invites to our parents, I invited some family friends, and so did my FW. But my mom has some friends I know I didn't want to come, so we didn't open that can of worms with ANY family members.

I asked FH to elope, he told me is mother would be crushed. So we decided parents would be there. Then he told me his mom would be crushed if his siblings couldn't be there. So we added siblings. Then grand parents. Some how from here we ended up inviting 85 people. We invited in groups. Parents, siblings, grand parents, aunts and uncles, closest friends, and immediate family children. FH's list is twice as long as mine.

Neither of us are having parent input on guestlist. We approached it differently, he selectively chose family, I just did everyone up to first cousins. We both added some family friends/friends to a much lesser degree. It'll be 80% family.

We currently have roughly 100 people on our guest list. Out of that about 30 people are family member of both of us. 25 our my FH guests, 20 are mine. And 30 are my parents guests. I was hoping to keep our wedding at 75 guests. But we will see after the RSVP how many are coming.

We invited about 150:

10% my family (I have a VERY small family)

60% his family

30% our friends

We didn't really split it 50/50. I only wanted to invite my mom, grandmother, and aunts/uncles/cousins, and no extended family. FMIL insisted on throwing us some money, which we are grateful for, but that also came with 90 family members, great aunts, third cousins, etc.

Our guest list is my immediate family (dad, siblings/their spouses, my niece and nephew). My aunts and uncles, my first cousins and their kids and a handful of very close friends.

He has no contact with his family so his guest list is the people he considers family and a few close friends.

I have more guests but only bc he didn't have people he wanted to invite. And I cut my family invites waaaaay down.

I have more people on my side just because i have a bigger family. We did build separate list then we edited the list together using this flowchart I found on Pinterest.

FH and I both knew immediately that we wanted something very small, immediate family and a few close friends only. We started by adding parents, siblings (and SOs), and grandparents, then added our MOH and BM. We also added FH's aunt and uncle who we are close to and another couple we are friends with to fill out our list. It ends up being almost 50/50 split.

One of the biggest requirements that we had is that both of us had to have met the person prior to our engagement and at least one of us had to have had a meaningful conversation with them within the past year. This really helped to cut down on obligation invites and "friends" who had more recently become more like acquaintances. We did not extend invites to our parents' friends (much to my FMILs disappointment) but, it was important to us that we kept the guest list to only people we knew and wanted there. We actually turned down offers of financial help so that we could maintain control.