Wedding guests

Thank you everyone for your input! I always wanted a small intimate wedding, and unfortunately, the guests list ended up bumping up to almost 130 people. I really do appreciate everyones commentary, moving forward I hope i can can easily wether, divert, distract or even just say no to people and their requests, after all it is the two who are getting married's day, which means we're the ones with the most say. BUT thank you to all of you for your insight, i really do appreciate it!

Our wedding is slightly on the larger size (compared to the ladies that have already answered anyways) at 120 but Dave and I decided we are just doing family up to first cousins and no kids except his niece and nephew (who will play a part in our wedding). If we invited first cousins kids plus guests children we would have around 25 extra guests and since 120 in our venue is tight, that would be 25 adults we would really like to be there that would have to come off the guest list to accommodate a child (our venue considers over 10 an adult at full price which most of these kids would be). As much as there are a few little ones I would like to have, with kids (especially of relatives) it was an all or nothing situation. And looking at paying $2000 for children to eat an adult portion made it an easier decision. So far all of the people with children that we've let know it's adult only are actually excited about having a date night!

If you are talking about only a couple people sometimes it's easier to bite the bullet and invite them but if it's a group you can eliminate entirely it may take a lot of unnecessary stress out of YOUR day

I think its tough but you have to stick to your guns. Telling people you're at capacity is a handy trick.

It's tough cause I'm not inviting any of the people I work with. I work in a small office with 7 other people. I'm friendly with 3 of the 7.. but I can't really invite those three people and ignore the other 4 so I'm not inviting anyone.

It depends on the you have relationship with those individuals.

To those that I have no intention of inviting, I limit wedding talk to almost nothing around them (this includes, friends, family and co-workers). If they do ask about if you have found a date or venue just kindly say something along the lines of we are still looking, nothing set in stone yet etc. just to throw them off the topic.

Those who are insisting to be invited which I know this is a touchy topic, I would say something like we are having a small wedding (which to me implies that only direct family and close friends will be there. So no extended family or anything like that.). To be honest I plan to be a hermit for the next couple months before the wedding or hanging out with those that are invited so I can avoid the question of whether "Am I invited?" around those that aren't invited.

Thank you everyone for the advice! I really do appreciate it!!!

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Why are people so awkward lol.

I agree with everyone and say too select those that will be important to come and my family told me 10 - 20% decline from friends. Had a small wedding of 75 pple. Don't go by honouring what others feel and to ask if they will be there.

I would just be honest with people and let them know that you want to keep it small and under budget.

I would just say to those that you had no intention of inviting that it's a small venue and you wanted to keep it intimate. I've been asked numerous times from people who I barely speak to when they will see their invites in the mail and all I do is laugh it off and walk away and completely ignore them lol

We decided we wanted a small wedding and to do that only immediate family (parents, aunts, uncles, cousins) were invited, which still ended up putting us at 40 people. There were 1-2 family members we would have rather not invited, but we didn't want to deal with the politics of it, so we just dealt with it and more or less just didn't think of it and all went off perfectly.

The best advice I can give is to choose a small venue. If your venue can only accommodate say, 80 guests, then you are reduced to inviting only the people you want there.

When we made our guest list, we set the criteria of aunts, uncles and first cousins only (for family). We put together our list and then shared with our parents and said "if you really genuinely feel someone has been left off who is important, let us know. But know that we are pretty much at our max capacity and we have ultimate veto power". If you're paying for your wedding, you have that power. If parents are helping, you have to hear them out and be willing to work with them, unfortunately. Mind you, we weren't at max capacity and had room to add people, but only we really knew that. As far as people who weren't invited, but think they should be, if they ask you directly about it, say you wanted to keep your guest list small but you appreciate that they are excited about your engagement. At the end of the day, it's your wedding and you should have the people around you that YOU two want. Hopefully they're not rude about it, but nowadays, there really is a lot less of the "you have to do this and that" mentality when it comes to weddings. It's about you and the person you're marrying and that's it!

I was dealing with similar issues as well. This is why we decided to have a small wedding of 60 guests. In this case, if anyone asks why they were not invited, we tell them that the wedding was really intimate and that if we invited them, we would have invited almost double the size of people and we could not afford it. What would someone say to “I cannot afford it”?