Cutting wedding number size down

We did a few lists:
1. who *needs* to be there (us, officiant, witnesses, photographer)
2. who would we be the saddest to miss (parents & siblings)3. who have we looked forward to sharing this with the most (wedding party & closest friends for us, but this could be uncles or cousins to other people)
We also took into account that it wasn't safe for grandparents to attend. We quickly realized that if we invited one person from a group (like aunts & uncles) then we had to have them all, so we only had immediate family and our wedding party which was just under 20. My husband's parents and my brother couldn't come because of our provincial isolation requirements. Family members were hurt, some of them were more understanding than others (we may have received a passive aggressive Christmas card that I'm bitter about).

Revise your guest list for now to include family and friends and other guests for a later reception next year or when everything clears up. Its hard to keep things the way we would like it though its changed in many ways. Just have patience as we all are waiting to get through the pandemic.

I agree with most of Hank's advice. Don't let anyone try to talk you into inviting someone you don't want at your wedding.

There are also a ton of flowcharts on Pinterest and other websites that can help you narrow down who to invite. Immediate family is usually an obvious yes, as are close friends. The flowcharts mostly narrow down whether extended family, distant friends, or coworkers are worth inviting. The takeaway for most of these categories is you should only invite someone if you can't imagine your wedding without them or if you would be hurt if you weren't invited to their wedding.

We asked ourselves about each guest: would we have them over for dinner, just us and them? If we said no, we "cut" them. (I hate using the word cut 😔)

View quoted message This is amazing info looks like its gonna help alot

If you already have a running list going and it's more than 50, stop adding to it. If anyone is not from the city of the wedding, omit them. It's a pandemic so no hard feelings.

Go through who you have already and divide it in half per side (unless one is willing to give the other side more seats). List the immediate family members - no cousins, aunts or uncles, just parents, grandparents, siblings, and children. You can omit anyone who you don't have a great relationship with as family doesn't automatically necessitate an invite, especially if they're toxic. Hopefully that list is no bigger than 20 but if so, that means you have less room for others.

Now decide if you want to prioritize best friend(s) or extended family. Be disciplined. Don't let other people tell you "you have to invite this person." It's your wedding. You get to decide who should be there, not some schmuck that someone else feels entitled to have.

If that number hasn't filled 50, fill the remain seats based on who you see/talk to the most. The person you see once a month should be priority over the person you see once a year. If you haven't seen that person for the 6 months prior to the pandemic, I say it's safe to cut them out. If you haven't talked to that person for 12 months prior to the pandemic, they should not be on the list.

Good luck!