Guest list woes

[BramRang]

How did you decide who to invite?

I am having an absolute nightmare with my guest list at the moment to the point where I'm considering cancelling the whole thing and hiring a field with multiple marquees so I can host the 500 people exaggeration ARGH.

Oh God I can't imagine having a guest list potentially that large!

In your position I would stick to family you see regularly....and friends you see regularly.

Distant relations you don't see due to their being elderly or a long way away could still be considered.

Anyone you haven't seen for more than 18 months...no invitation. Also no work colleagues.

We could only invite between 40-50.

Immediate family on both sides, friends that had known us from the beginning. 2+ ones and a random!

What seemed to work is that the whole party were quite similar type people. There was no stress keeping people happy or seeking approval. Possibly because we had more friends than family there.

Worth remembering that guests are what push the price of weddings up. It’s not just food. It means more printed invites , bigger venue, more chairs, more table settings and favours, literally everything.
I think guests like a smaller wedding done well than an anonymous going through the motions wedding.

We both have lots of different groups of friends (we've both lived/worked abroad separately, both still have school friends, he has uni friends, I have local friends, and then we've lived in two different places in the UK). When you marry someone you went to school with you aren't supposed to have these kinds of problems!

And both of our parents divorced and remarried when we were children (under 10) so we have the additional extra 'families' that come with gaining a step parent... so it's almost like we have 8 family strands to accommodate. Including step siblings etc. It's a great thing to have so much family, but not when planning a wedding! We're both close to our cousins too (me as an only child and DP as his mum died when he was a teen so aunts/uncles took a more active role in spending time with him).

We have a venue booked but I think we're going to have to look somewhere else and lose the deposit.

We are finding the same issue, and I think it's in part because of our ages as we are getting married a bit later in life (40) - my group of school friends (who I am still really close to) would have been 5 guests 15 years ago, now thanks to husbands and children it's 19 guests 😫