Guest list - numbers question?

The original guest list can be saved for your anniversary celebration or wedding renewal. Cutting down the list to the minimal for this year would help to have just family attending. You can have a proper celebration once all this clears up and have guests present in the next few years.

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No Problem!

View quoted message I love that messaging!! Thank you for sharing this

Considering right now (in ON at least) I'd stick to top 50 ppl. Make them your "A" list guests. Then say 3- 4 months before your wedding if things return to pre-covid invite the remaining guests from your "B" & "C" lists. Plus you can always add to your catering & decor numbers a month in advance, harder to get money back for decreased guests list. Plus it may save you the heart ache of disinviting guests in the future. For now, I'm tell people on my "A" list to basically save the date now (September 2021), then once we have a better idea on things (June) I can make a decision then to invite more people, because yes, not everyone will be able to come no matter what.

Definitely agree with the tiered invites. We originally wanted 50-70 people at our wedding, but now that we have made a first pass at a guest list we are at 150 including children. We plan to do tiered invites to keep our final guest count to 100.

Definitely do tiered. When we sent out our invites (we are now postponed and will be sending new ones) Extended family who we expected to decline ended up being our first response with an attending!!!

Our guest list is at about 115 right now, but we have big questions marks with our guest list. Because all my extended family live out West, with current restrictions they would have to come, self isolate for 14 days before seeing any of us and coming to the wedding. This makes judging numbers tricky.

Because I feel like a lot of our guest list may be hesitant to come or not be able to, we have added the following message on the back of our save the dates:

"We are so excited to share our special day with you! However, we know that Covid-19 has affected all of us to varying degrees. If for whatever reason you are unable to attend our wedding, please know that we understand, and love you all the same!"

In my head, this gives people the "out" or "permission" to say no without feeling guilty, which may help keep our numbers down too. It also opens up a conversation where you may be able to get some soft yes's/no's before even sending your RSVPS.

I also like the idea of a tiered invite list others have already mentioned.

Be careful with this, especially during Covid. We got married 3 weeks ago outdoors and were only able to have a max of 100 people. We invited 110 (our venue suggested it as they figured people would say no) we have 108 RSVP yes! we had to call 4 couples and unintive them. It was horrible!!!! (we then had 6 people not show at the wedding, which is another story altogether).

Maybe invite 1 or 2 extra, or send out your invites, wait for "no" replies, then send out another round.

View quoted message Oh sorry to hear that! Totally understandable

View quoted message Basically. I know they would be happy to get an invite so I’m going to send one. My grandpa is terminally ill and my grandma is very old and hasn’t been able to travel in the last few years. She’s also sick too.

View quoted message Just for a keepsake! They are both very sick unfortunately.

Are you inviting your grandparents for the sake of formality? Have you both already discussed how they won't be there? If not, they might have every intention to attend and show up despite the risks to their health.

Personally if there are guests I didn't want attend even for the sake of safety, I wouldn't send them an invite.

You could make 2 lists, and if people on list 1 say no you can then invite that many people from list 2.


You'll need to send the list 1 invites a few weeks earlier with an RSVP deadline that gives you time to send list 2 without a scramble for those people to reply.

I agree with Arexy you wouldn't want to end up with more people then you actually planned for! I would count every guest you plan to send an invite to and then determine after declines if you want to send out to anymore people. Out of curiosity if you know your grandparents aren't coming, what is the purpose of sending them an invite. Is it just for a keepsake? I'm just curious what if they do actually attend.

No do not do this! Imagine someone you thought wouldn’t come actually accepts the invite? What you should do is tiered invites. Send out your first round to must have guests. If you get people that decline, you then begin sending out a second round based on how many available spots you have left