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The guest list is becoming one of the most dreaded things about wedding planning for us. Our venue has a minimum guest count for our wedding day (125 people). But 125 people is also our maximum because that is all we can afford. A minimum and a maximum of the same number…is it possible?!?
Image via Wedding Liaison
Oh what a pickle. Our guest list has turned into an exact science since we need to get precisely 125 guests. Here is my plan for achieving the supposedly impossible difficult. (I don’t believe in that word after seeing what the Pickle Puppy is capable of.)
Steps 2, 3, and 5 are easy peasy, but how did we get our guest list to that magic 125? We split the guest list down the middle and each invited exactly 62.5 people. I got to invite whoever I wanted and Mr. Cucumber Sammie invited whoever he wanted, but it had to be under our 62.5 limit. There were many discussions, lots of tears, constant temple massaging, and a dash of screaming…by Mr. Cucumber Sammie. He definitely had more difficulty with his list. We eventually reached a standstill and decided to break out the big guns.
The flow chart! / Image via BridalBuds / Credit: Brides
My list was hard, too, but Mama CS was a superstar (again!) and basically did it for me.
We did have a couple of tricks up our sleeves besides the handy flow chart for helping us narrow down the list. To decide if someone got a “plus one,” we said no house, no spouse, no ring, no bring. Lucky there were only a couple of people for whom we had to activate the saying.
We also aren’t having any children. I know, I am like the Wicked Witch of the West. My youngest cousin will be in college by the time we get married. So unfortunately everyone under college age is out. We are not having a ring bearer or flower girl, so it makes it a little less complicated to say no kids. Although I will miss adorable pictures like this:
Do you think it will work, or am I crazy? Any other tips on narrowing down the guest list or helping us achieve exactly 125 people?
I am glad to see other hives who are saying no to the children. I recently sent out our invitations and on the rsvp I simply put ADULT ONLY RECEPTION. The gasp and stares we got when we informed our family the no kid rule. It’s not that I don’t like children, but every person in our family has about 3 each. SERIOUSLY! it adds up. So we are outcasting them from the wedding oh well they will live. Good Luck getting your 125 I believe you can do it.
We aren’t having kids either for the same reason. We have a limited space and the venue is not exactly kid friendly, plus if we had one kid it would turn into 45!!
How do you make sure that a person you invite cannot have a plus one?
My fiancee and I just went through the dreaded finalization of the guest list this week. It was awful and not without some heated discussions. We cannot have more than 180, and we have 192 on the guest list knowing not everyone will come. We are having kids at the wedding (I have younger siblings), but we had to decide on a strict “no plus 1″ rule. Im going to steal your “no house, no spouse, no ring, no bring” should I get any complaints.
@hl31486: Great question! I’ve had several people just RSVP with a plus one, regardless of wording of the invitation. There may be some awkward conversations ahead if you stick to your guns on that.
It sounds like you will be paying for 125 people no matter what, so I think slowly adding people as you get ‘no’ responses is a good idea. Some co-workers or distant friends will most likely be the most understanding, so maybe add them to the B list?
I think you have a really good tactic for achieving your 125 goal—ingenious, in fact! I think you can pull it off 
We are somewhat in the same situation. Although 100 is our minimum catering count, we can “afford” a little more. (We can really afford, like, zero people.) So we will be sending out a second round of invites too! Please let us know how the final tally comes out!
I’ve been an event planner for a lot of years. You are going to drive yourselves batty if you try to get the exact number. It’s a noble goal, but do you really have to put yourself under that much stress? The world as we know it will not come to an end if you pay for 125 but only 122 actually come.
It’s always dismaying to have empty seats that you paid for, but it happens to EVERYONE. Guests (and that applies to all of us at one time or another) are a fickle lot. They say one thing and do another. And really think about whether one or two additional people will throw you into a budget disaster, or are you just drawing a semi-artificial line in the sand?
I tell people who are stressing out over these kinds of details that the only real disasters at a wedding are 1) one of you deciding that this whole “getting married” thing is a bad idea, or 2) someone getting seriously ill, or worse. Everything else is just a bump in the road and a good story.
Good luck with you list!
It’s your wedding, so do exactly what you want to do and have the number of people you want to have there! Proof that it’s possible: the whole time we were planning our wedding, my dream number was 100 guests. And somehow, that night, we had exactly 100 people present! Good luck!
We were looking at 400 guests, then after no discount from the caterer and realizing our reception is near a main road that has 18-wheelers flying down it we decided on no kids under 11 or 13. It was hard to do and I feel really bad when someone says “o so and so’s 7 yr old cant wait to dance with you” 
But we have a very limited budget and I even started kicking off some adults like uncle johns second mothers, brother cousin (I know makes no sense but thats really what its like). So right now our list is down to like 300-350 i would like to be less then that.
It’ll work! Anything with a pretty flowchart and Mom’s help has to. We started with 130 possible guests and narrowed it down to 101 invitees and wound up with 85. You can always add guests to meet the minimum so as long as you’ve left a time cushion for mailing to the B list, you should be okay. As for the no kids thing, we did it too and no one yelled, screamed or otherwise threw a fit.
My guy and I were recently invited last minute to a wedding of friends. We knew that they were having a small wedding, so we weren’t really expected to be invited. When it got close to their wedding, they explained that some of their family members weren’t able to attend and they would love it if we could come now that there was room. We were very happy to be included in their special day and weren’t offended at all to be on the b list.
I think you can do it! You have a very well thought out plan. I’m sure that you have friends who will understand a last minute invite as long as you explain that you had to wait to see if you had enough room for your family. Good luck!
I do encourage you to include some sort of invitation wording that ensures your guests don’t bring children. We “didn’t invite” any kids either and two couples have already replied with their children included in their response.
You can totally do this! You already have great strategies to employ, and I definitely agree with the fluid approach to the guest list as RSVPs trickle in. Good luck!
I really like your plan of attack. This part of wedding planning is causing me some anxiety, and you gave me hope that we can get through this process, too 
I feel ya! We too nixed the children, and had to keep things to 80. We also initially said NO PLUS ONE’s unless… but we’re caving on that. We said family members and those in the bridal party can bring somebody, because it seemed like the least we could do to allow like, his dad or one of my bridesmaids to bring a friggin’ date. That left us with approximately three single people on the guest list, so we MIGHT let them bring somebody… But as a rule, we’re putting a fill-in-the-blank (by us) line on the RSVP card indicating how many seats they get.
You seem to have a solid plan of action! One thing I’d pass along that others passed along to me (and which I’m ignoring for now) - we’re doing almost the exact same thing with the RSVP dates, but I did hear that somebody may say no and then later change their minds - kinda tricky when you’ve just allowed somebody else to come in their place, and a potentially awkward conversation to have! I hope this doesn’t happen to us though…
Are you inviting couples that have been in long term relationships, even if they are not engaged? Do you consider the boyfriend/girlfriend a plus one that is not invited or are you inviting the boyfriend/girlfriend?
I actually had the same situation — we had a minimum of 125 for our venue but only wanted a max of 125 guests for budget reasons. We ended up under 125 because of some last-minute cancellations/emergencies. I agree with Leonore above — it will be okay if you are slightly under (and, likely, slightly over). If you obsess over 125 EXACTLY you run the risk of driving yourself crazy, and it’s not worth it.
I have a large family, so we didn’t split the guest list evenly, but we were careful about who we included. I think our original list was about 150ish, and we added a few people as no’s came back. We ended up with 124 yeses, which with no shows was probably 122. Honestly, I don’t even know for sure. It all worked out for the best Good luck to you!
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Mrs. Cucumber Sandwich, Washington, DC/Cape May, NJ Age and Occupation: 28, School Counselor Fiance's Age and Occupation: 40, Collegiate Athletics Engagement Date: March 27, 2010 Wedding Date: October 2011 Venue: Congress Hall Hotel About Me: I am a school counselor who spends my day wrangling children and my nights attempting to be creative with wedding projects. My enthusiasm for each of these activities far surpasses my skill. Thank goodness Mr. Cucumber Sandwich is there to pick up the pieces and be the voice of reason about my DIY tries. I have an obsession with terrible romantic comedies (‘From Justin to Kelly’ anyone?, anyone?!?), competitive Scrabble play, and hot dogs. I could eat astronaut ice cream for every meal and can’t seem to resist buying more shoes. Our wedding is going to be a true hodge podge of semi-destination, tradition, Yuengling, New England charm, with just a dash of ‘Jersey Shore’ thrown in. It has been six years in the making and I can’t wait to marry my best friend.
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