Guest list breakdown!

Surpringly we actually had pretty even numbers for each of our family and friends on both sides, I was really surprised when I went over everything as I’m very selective and he’s a lot more social ☺️

I ended up inviting more guests, but most of them live in another province and won't be coming, so more of his guests will be there. We didn't really have a strategy, just wrote down who we all wanted to invite, it was double our intended size, so cut out my cousins mostly (since we aren't that close anyway, and again, they all live in another province!). And, still ended up inviting more than our intended number, but our venue will still hold the number if everyone says yes

We each made a list. My family is huge and his is tiny, so probably 60% of the guest list is my family. 30% his family and the rest friends.

We decided 60 guests for me, 40 for my FH (Since my family is mostly overseas less of them will show) and it’s ended up being 52 for him and 68 for me. Rules were only if we don’t know them, they’re not invited. (his mum was really pushing for a few people that we didn’t know at all) I have a lot of second cousins I’m close to and some third cousins, but not all of them, so no blanket rules there.

I don't have exact numbers yet, but we basically decided:

family
friends
colleagues
+1s only for engaged/married/serious relationship- same rule for bridal party.

View quoted message We are the exact same way! We just made a list together and who cares if it’s a bit uneven!

We had no trouble at all, we knew we wanted a smaller wedding.

We wrote down the people who were important to be there with us, so family (no extended family... which means anyone past aunt/uncle/cousin status - ie no cousins of my dad's). Neither of us have a huge family, then we had our closest friends and then fleshed it out from there. We ended up almost 50/50 with him having more friends, but me having more family. for a break down:

Bride's family: 18

Groom's family: 17

Groom's Friends: 19 (though I'd now argue some of these are my friends as well)

Family friends: 14 (pretty even here)

Bride's friends: 11

We have a total of 79 guests invited.

We began making out guest list and went from there. We actually haven't counted who has more guests because it doesn't matter to us lol.

We wanted to keep it to 60 (we was a compromise between an elopement, which I would have preferred, and the more typical wedding that he was after) and aimed for no more than 30 each. Not all cousins made the cut, but I have more family than friends coming where as he has the opposite. His family immigrated here when he was a kid, so his relatives are mostly in Europe. There was a bit of wiggle room, but with mutual friends it’s a pretty equal split.

Sounds like we did the same (or similar) process to everyone else! Luckily we both have small families so we started with our family members and wedding party then started adding our friends from there! Me, my husband, and our parents all made A, B, and C lists for our friends so I could start adding in waves and see how high the total guest list got!!

Here was our final breakdown on guests we invited:

My family - 12 guests

His family - 15 guests

My family friends (plus my parents' friends) - 59 guests

His family friends (plus his parents' friends) - 46 guests

My friends - 53 guests

His friends - 71 guests

We wrote down our families, close friends, and mutual friends. It was way more than we wanted, so we had to cut. We didn’t make it 50/50 his guests and my guests because his family is much larger than mine, but it meant he had to cut friends more than I did because our guests were unequal. We invited 130 or so people and our final number is 117 (including us and photographers)

We didn't divide up. We chalked down the VIPs (close friends/immediate family) then talked about where we'd draw the line, as we didn't want to go over 100 guests. We decided to stop our list at first cousins and their spouses but excluding their kids.

We didn't really divide it up... We got engaged and shortly after my fiance's mother handed us a sheet of 75 people she wanted to invite (family and her friends) and then my mom did the same shortly after hahaa!

Since we only wanted 200 people we had to be selective of our final 50 spots were were allowed haha! Honestly wasn't a bad thing at all! They took care of all the family which was huge!

I wrote down all of my family first (just hadn't sat down with the fiance yet), then we sat and wrote down all of his family, but he kept adding friends in between (luckily WeddingWire sorts that out for me)...

We didn't have a set number, we wrote everyone down and went from there. Of course, we forgot people, so the guest list did some jumps (85, 100, 115... 140...)

So we realized we had to make a call, if we cut a lot of guests +1 option (those of his friends we know don't have significant others, and would probably bring a random girl), and decided on no kids (35 kids between our 2 families). We were able to settle the list at 118 people.

Now that it's been 2-3 months since we made the list, and the novelty has worn off, my FH's parents have started saying we can cut a bunch of people from their family... We might as well save money and not feel obligated to invite certain cousins, etc, who my FH never sees...

Our breakdown is:

Bride Family: 48
Groom Family: 27
Bride Friends: 3 (yes, sad, I know)
Groom Friends: 34
Mutual Friends: 4

My parents are paying for the wedding, so my mother has already said if there are extended family who I want to cut to spare the budget, she will just extend the budget to cover the people she wants to have there. My family is much closer than my FH's, so that's fine with me.

Overall, I'm grateful for the WeddingWire app, if I had to re-write or re-draw the guest list/seating chart multiple times, I'd lose my mind. Having everyone sorted is so easy!

We sat down together and started with people who must be there (immediate family and such) and then we started adding in friends and family friends and slightly more distant relations. It was actually pretty easy for us.

We wrote down all our family and friends that we wanted to have at our wedding, added their plus ones and kids (we know lots of people won’t bring their kids, but the choice is theirs). Seen the total then started looking for a venue. I would say it’s more friends then family as FH has lost a lot of family members. We are in our mid 30s with kids, so our friend groups aren’t as big as they were when we were younger. We didn’t split up any numbers or anything. Just wanted all the important people to be there for our big day.

We honestly just wrote down a total number we wanted there and decided that we weren't to go over it. We've been adding and removing people as we go along. We are 54 days out and seem to keep adding people but have remained until the max number of people we want there.