Venue Anxiety

I'm glad you found your answer. In the end it's about you and your loved ones.

I didn't mine the minimum requirement because there are always more people you can invite. People that you meet along the way to planning, like other brides you connect with, or co-workers that offer helping hands with no expectations of being invited. If anything I have problems with keeping to my numbers. I want the world to share my day. To know how proud I am of the person I want to marry.

I'm still always internally shocked when people are like 70 people? THATS IT?!

Like holy moly. I feel like I have no friends haha.

Minimums are ALWAYS tricky.

We're having a small wedding (75 people.. which I still can't fathom is small). There were so many venues that we looked at where we didn't have enough people to actually book with them! Minimum was 100 or 110.

The venue we ended up going with charges a minimum dollar amount. With the amount of people we're having and the Cost Per Person we don't actually meet that minimum dollar amount. Our venue however, is allowing us to 'upgrade' or 'add' things such as more apps, more expensive liquor to 'spend' that extra money to get us to the minimum.

My venue requires a minimum of 125 guests, we are at 112 confirmed, and we have 73 left to get replies from, now those are from my tradiotional family, that wants a physical paper invitation in their hand. I'm really hoping that 10 to 20 of them send regrets, because we have a second list of people that we want there, but had to get bumped for family. We saw about 20 venues and probably 16 of them required minimums.

As Stephanie said in another post, you should check with them what the minimum is. If you can afford it (even without that many attending), then I would continue on with them if that's the venue you fell in love with. So if they need 100 people and you can pay for 100, even if only 80 show up, then I'd say do it (even if it's a little odd that they request that).

I invited over 230 people, and I had almost half respond no. Right now we're looking at around 140 people. Our wedding is also in the winter which makes travel tricky and we had a lot of out of town guests who would have to rely on flying, so I'm not overly surprised by the numbers. Go with your gut!

Hi Bianca! What percentage of your guests need to RSVP yes to hit your minimum? Make sure to factor in how far your guests are traveling!

To be super cautious I'd want to make sure that you can afford for 20-30% of your guests to RSVP no, or be comfortable meeting the minimum spend regardless of the RSVPs!

I've never heard of a minimum at venues.. only a maximum.

Our venue didn't have a guest minimum, but they did require us to book their in-house audio/visual people. So, I can understand where you're coming from. I fell in love with the place immediately, so we booked the place. But now the audio/visual company is charging us a lot more than we originally anticipated and it's given me serious anxiety to the point that I want to cancel. But the place has been super accommodating since I've expressed my concerns. Your venue might be more flexible than you think. Just keep the lines of communication open.

I see now. For us, venue was one of the top three things. Also, I am the type of person who, once I see something I like, I can't forget about it, and the day of the wedding, I would feel like the other option was the second choice. But, everyone is different so if you are having second thoughts about it, maybe it's not the right place.

A venue can't make you fill the minimum requirement; they can charge you for a minimum though. For example, if the minimum is 100, and you invite 150 people, and only 90 of them can come, you've done your part to try to meet that minimum requirement. They will still charge you as if 100 people came though. You can't control other people's schedules.