How many guests to invite? And did you get a professional to do your invitations?

As your considering the guest count, give up to 10% decline. That being said, look into sending out some others you have thought about and cancelled off your list. If your good with less than 80, then all good. We were less than 75 and invited 1 MOH parents and 1 friend's mom sister who couldn't be left unattended.

As for invitations, i did try going through a company too and they were as expensive as indian cards. I ended up purchasing and creating on vistaprint.

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You are lucky to have a graphic designer friend! A friend just told me that she has a graphic designer friend and trying to get me some quotes! If it works out, I'll probably do the same and print it myself.

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Thank you - will avoid to over invite!

That is what I always fall back into - thinking that they will just toss it and all that money is thrown away. But at the same time it is nice not to think about designing your own have the work done by a professional.

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I am glad to hear good feedback about Vistaprint! We are thinking of visitin g their store in Toronto to get more of a sense of what we are getting into before we actually decide to go for it.

And yes, we also have some out of towners, we actually sent them an unofficial save the date email exactly 1 year before our wedding date and only 4 have officially confirmed. But we will see! I feel like getting the RSVPs and guest list are the one of the most stressful part of the wedding planning!

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I've come across Minted but haven't really looked into it. Also concerned how much more it'll cost as it is all in USD. But I love that they address the envelopes as it is such a huge time saver and makes the invitation clean (no need to handwrite!) Thanks so much - I should probably look into this further!

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Thank you! We will for sure have to drill down the guests and create a B-list! Didnt think about this prior!

I will probably should check Etsy too for templates - thank you for the idea!

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Agreed! We are also trying to stick within the budget which makes everything else difficult to decide!

I have been looking at Vista Print and got their sample and the quality is pretty good - we are heading towards using it as well.

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I guess 80 guests is the best way to go! Thanks so much!

It depends on a lot of things. But there are many times when 100% show up or close to. Other times less than 50%. I would suggest start with 80 and then add more as guests decline. It's not ideal but it saves you from ending up with more guests than you can afford.

I used Vistaprint for our invitations and loved them - we "splurged" and got a more expensive paper option (premium matte). The cost of postage ended up being more than the invites themselves because we got them on sale but in total I think I spent about $200 on invitations/postage. I think it's an easy place to cut costs if you're looking for one.

For the guest list, I recommend inviting your first wave and then having a backup list ready to go quite quickly, especially if your venue has a minimum requirement. Just send them out a bit earlier than you would otherwise so that you still have time to collect RSVPs from your second list. It also depends on your guest list - if you have a lot of out-of-towners, you'll probably get more declines. We invited about 160 people and ended up with 95 guests because we had a bunch who were international that couldn't travel or take that much time off work.

The whole "percentage of your invited guests won't come" is more for larger weddings, when you're inviting aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, friends, friends of friends, work colleagues, etc...

When you're only inviting 80 to 100 people, most likely they are closer friends/family, and most of them will come. Our guest list is 108 people... ONE set of aunt/uncle may not be in town... all our out of town guests have already said they are coming, and all in-town guests are likely to come.

If you have space or budget restrictions, I would do the A-list, B-list method... Have your 80 people, then once you get the feel of anyone who knows they'll be out of town, or prior commitments, you can invite some B-list guests.

I would invite 90! They say about 20% wont come but I feel that's more for larger crowds! If anything if you come closer to the date and you're under the 80 inviting a few extras then is fine! My friend the other day had some No responses and she asked me to come to her wedding! Which is in 2 weeks haha!! Last minute but as a bride too I totally understand being a last minute add in and do not mind in the slightest!!

We're getting our invitations from Minted.

They are more expensive than Vistaprint, BUT....here's the thing....Vistaprint designs are ripoffs from places like Minted.

So it depends whats important to you. For my fiance and I...we're theatre artists, so its important to us to make sure that other artists are getting paid for their work, so even though we're paying more for our invitations, we're saving money by not doing RSVP cards, info cards, menus, ceremony programs, etc. We're doing RSVPs on our website, so that also saves a ton on postage for the RVSP cards.

ALSO...and this is a HUGE plus...Minted allows you to upload your guest spreadsheet and they ADDRESS YOUR ENVELOPES FOR YOU.

I agree with most people here. If you are aiming for 80, send out 80 in the initial first wave and have everything ready for a b-list.
If you really want to not wait or do the b-list option, I wouldn't send more than the maximum capacity of your venue (remembering to include you and you fiancee! Me and my fh almost forgot that in our first attempt on numbers...lol). The max capacity for an event could be the upper limit for the fire capacity, which you don't want to go over! (Risk of fines or venue can reserve the right to turn people away or remove from the space)

B-list. I wish my husband and I were more open to the B-list idea. We invited 150 and sent out a few to our b-list but we were late in doing so and all would have loved to attend if they had been given more notice. Don’t over invite with the hope of declines because RSVPs can be surprising.

I had my invitations professionally done and it cost a lot of money. At the time, it felt like it was totally worth every penny. Some people will toss them out and others will keep them, but it’s still expensive to get them done.

I personally would only invite the 80. While yes, generally about 85% of your invites RSVP. you wouldn't want to get into a situation where, more RSVP and you don't have room for them, or can't afford it.

I know tons of people that have used visataprint. and they turn out awesome. vistaprint even has graphic designers that can customize for you (there is a small fee involved).

For myself. My friend is a graphic designer. and is going to design my invite. I am going to have them printed by vistaprint or staples (will all depend on what sales are happening with each site when I go to print). If I didn't have my friend. I probably still would have found a graphic designer that I could sit with in person to talk to. and print them on my own.

Hi Kristine!

I would send the invitations to no more than 80 guests, just the off-chance everyone RVSP's yes. You can always create a "B-list" of invitations to send out to people who weren't included in the initial 80, but with a number of "No" RVSP's, you now have room for. From my understanding, your venue's minimum is 80? Is there a maximum number but you are trying for 80 to minimise costs?

We have a minimum of 90 and a maximum of 200 for our venue and our list is at 160 (including B-list, our target was 120) so if we fall below the 90, we'll send out those B-list invites (friends we've fallen out of touch with, co-workers, people parents want to invite, etc).

As for invitations, I know lots of girls have used vista-print on here and loved their invites! Etsy also has some templates you can download and DIY the rest. Ours will probably be an Etsy template we picked out.

I would first invited the 80 people and have a second set of invitations with the only difference being a new RSVP date of course.

If you are like me then it would be just your luck that things like this wouldn't work out and if you do send out more than 80 you will get more than 80 RSVPing yes to coming and then you have to figure that out...

I will be using Vista Print as I want physical invitations but I do understand that they just get thrown away once the guests RSVP and set it in their calendars so it isn't worth the extra money IMO