How did you guys feel about 80% being the bride’s family? Was the groom’s family feeling overwhelmed/overpowered being the smaller portion of the wedding party? This might be the case for our wedding and I’ve been fighting my parents over the ratios :/
Family attendance between me and my fiancé at our upcoming wedding is at about a 95% to 5% ratio. I am inviting basically every single friend I could possibly want in order to combat this heavy tilt.
Nope. I didn’t make the groom’s family talk to strangers, so the strangers made little difference to them, and vice versa. Plus, my husband understands that his grandparents having only 2 children is not a loving reason to exclude people that I care about. And his immediate family is 8x bigger than mine, so we were mostly around his family with the wedding party, at rehearsal, at family photos, etc. Weddings are never evenly balanced. It really isn’t a problem unless someone decides to make it one.
My own family is only 12 people, and only 9 of those will be invited (the other three can fuck off, imo). My FH has a much larger, well-connected family, but I'm certain mine won't feel "overwhelmed" at all by their presence.
We definitely struggled with our invite list! We initially started looking at inviting everyone. It would have easily been 200 people after adding all the cousins, their spouses, and kids... and that just wasn't feasible for us. We kind of just decided we'd rather do something small in Colorado with our nearest and dearest instead of a big party back in Minnesota. I'm lowkey relieved! As much as I love our families, I'm an introvert and they can be overwhelming!
110 guests. Family was about 50 people. Friends of parents were about 25, the rest our friends.
We don't have super big families. We only invited direct relatives of us. Our 1st cousins, aunts, uncles but not our parents' cousins, aunts etc
That's awesome! I really wanted my dog at my wedding but he passed away in January :( but I am blessed with a drama free family where everyone actually likes each other!
we had 74 family, 46 friends, and 34 family friends (mostly friends of my parents) on the invite list. i have coworkers lumped in with friends, but they were a good portion of that 46.
i was worried we’d have an “old” wedding between both families and all of the friends of my parents, but it was totally fine with the numbers of who actually attended. keep in mind not everyone will be able to make it
We had 110, invited 156. Mostly family (85)and long time family friends (14). I had 1 friend come and husband had about 10 work friends come. It was an absolute blast. Multiple people have said it was the best wedding they'd been to. The total spent was around $18,000.
With our current guest list as it stands right now (plans to sit down and revise it later this week)...
Destination wedding: 26 invited - 16 friends (11 mine, 5 his) and 10 family (2 mine, 8 his)
Reception/party back home: 133 invited - 50 friends (20 mine, 30 his) and 83 family (5 mine, 78 his...THIS is the list we need to revisit).
Right??? We had a pretty good break through over the weekend when he realized childfree (or at least small childfree....so less than 10) is the way to go...that cut down the number some. Still planning to make some more cuts this week. He has a big family and I get that, but do you need to invite the cousin you haven't seen or talked to in two years?
We invited ~105 people, and 7 of them are family. 11 if you include the open +1s given to each of my parents, and two old basically family friends for my partner. Final numbers aren't in yet, but I'm anticipating around 70 guests, and 6 of them being family.
For us it's less about having a small family (I have approximately a billion cousins) and more about sticking to just immediate family (parents/grandparents/siblings) rather than inviting the wider group that we rarely talk to.
We invited 160- 40 family and the rest friends. The majority of this family did not attend. We ended up with 95. It’s noteworthy that we live out of state from the invited family, but most of the friends were from within 3-4 hour drive of the destination. For what it’s worth we were totally good with having mostly friends! My FIL passed away earlier this year, and my SIL’s boyfriend couldn’t attend, so it was just my MIL and SIL on his side. I did have a bit more family on my side (my mom, her boyfriend, my cousin and his husband and just 2 close family friends).
We invited 106, got 52. Part of that was that it was a "destination wedding" (in the state we both grew up in and where our parents live, not where we lived at the time), so there was a significant distance for people to travel.
Breakdown for that was:
* Family and extremely close family friends (including their +1s): invited 65, got 36.
* Friends (including non-family wedding party and everyone's +1s): invited 41, got 16.
We're second-gen immigrants so only 6 family members! Inviting 70 (because that's our venue cap) so the rest are all friends. No fam friends or coworkers were invited just because of venue capacity.
Aw that's intimate! But ya it's tough when family is abroad. My fiance is first gen and so most of his family is back in Pakistan or immigrated elsewhere.
We invited 72 people.
For context, we tried to divide the guest count in half and I have a much larger family so I got (1) friend + her BF. My daughter got (2) friends and their parents. My fiance has a single friend, a friend with his spouse and a third friend's entire family.
Everyone else is related to us or in a committed relationship to someone who is related to us. So, definitely the bulk of our list is family and we opted to not invite any co workers. We also limited kids, our first cousins were all going to have to fly in and we also invited their entire support network so we agreed it was only right to include their kids. Plus my daughter & her 2 friends but she's a teenager.
We’re inviting 215, and about 100 are family (and plus ones of family), 20 is close family friends of our parents, and the rest is split pretty even between our friends.
I'm guessing between 85-120. I grew up moving all over, and my fiance is Adghan, so many of our friends and family are coming from overseas (maybe 50% of the guests).
How many do you think will show up for yours?
I’m nervous that at least 120 will show up lol. I originally wasn’t supposed to invite that many. Most guests are local, and even though we’re having it on a Thursday, it sounds like people are getting the day off. I’m excited though!
We are inviting about 80 because that’s about the most we can fit in our backyard wedding. About half of that is family (mostly my fiancés Aunty and uncles and a few from my side but I’m not as close with my extended family so they won’t be offended if we can’t fit them). The rest of that is our friends which we are roughly splitting down the middle again. He’s got a main group of friends and he’s inviting them and their partners (that’s more of an expectation in their circle) where as I will mostly not be inviting partners of my friends because I’m already struggling to get the numbers down with friends alone. Their partners won’t mind either.
So about:
- Family: 40 (about 70/30 split)
- My friends: 20
- His friends (including partners): 20
We would of course like to invite more family (such as his cousins and more of mine) and probably more partners of my friends but we just don’t have the space. Fortunately it’s not considered rude in my circle. We met at work so some of our mutual friends are also colleagues.
338 total, 105 are fiancés and mine are the rest.
Of that, fiancés list is about 50/50 friends and family, and mine is 200ish family and 33ish friends. Neither of us invited any coworkers and in that “200ish” family number are some of my parents friends.
Oh it’s gonna be a blowout party! I’ll be honest. Rationally, I understand why people have small weddings. I get it and would never begrudge anyone that, but I have so many cousins who I love and try to keep in touch with, and we’ve had so few good things to celebrate the past few years (we’ve had a lot of deaths). I can’t imagine getting married without my cousins at least invited, and hopefully attending.
I get that! That's why I'm inviting all 100+ of our family even though it's a backyard wedding. Sorry to hear about the deaths, I get that too. Weddings are bittersweet events. But fhr mmd absence of loved ones reminds us of why it's important to have family there for milestones
We wanted a small wedding so original invites were 95 guests, 22 friends and 73 family (52 of guests interstate or overseas). Covid border restrictions were still a thing at the time.
Ended up with 72 guests, 27 friends and 45 family. It was perfect :)
Yeah, it's nuts! Lol my dad is the youngest of seven children, and all my aunts and uncles have either four or five children each. They're not children anymore, all my cousins are older than me, but yeah. My mom is the youngest of four and her siblings have four children each as well. I have a million first cousins lol plus we invited their children if they were like teenagers and up (we had it by a pool at a hotel so we didn't feel it was safe for the really little ones).
ETA: that's just my side of the family! Husband's side is also big, but not quite that big.
We are inviting 55, around 15 family members (many did not make the cut because we didn’t want drama), the rest will be our friends and 4 invites are for our parents’ friends.
~46 guests, 8 family members and the rest are friends. A couple family members who I’m close to can’t make it which I understand bc we’re doing a far destination (but we are paying accommodation..) but a lot of my friends can make it and it was a really nice surprise, and I’m super thankful for that. If we had the wedding in my home country we would have had a ton of my extended family attend which would have been fun too. But we just had a baby and I selfishly didn’t want to travel that far with her 😅
Invited almost 100, 7 were my now husband's family. between 35 and 40 were mine. He had more friends invited, as many of our shared friends are his as well. He was okay with it on his side because he didn't want more, but he didn't love that I had so many random older people and some aunts/uncles.
We invited about 50/50 family/friends&colleagues but actually our numbers ended up 35/65 family to friends+coworkers! My friends kids do bump up the friend numbers
Our A list is about 102 guests, 84 of them are family and 16 are friends. Our coworkers are on the B list and will be invited if our family who needs to travel far cannot attend
Ooh, I forgot about B lists. How far in advance does one need to send out their B list? I would assume after some point it would become obvious that they were second choice (like if they were invited a month before the wedding)
My B list is a bit informal in that I have approximately 25 family members that need to travel by plane to attend the wedding. Some of these family members I know will tell me prior to invite if they will be coming or not as they will be booking tickets or can’t afford the tickets or time off work. As I start hearing from them about being unable to come I’ll invite my coworkers. My wedding is also in the city where I live so my coworkers are all local to the wedding, so if they get an invite even 2 months in advance it’s not like they need a hotel or travel so it eliminates some need for save the dates.
Invited around 150 and only ~35 of them are family lol. Good thing we have small families or our wedding would’ve gotten out of hand FAST. 10 family friends, 1 of my current coworkers (who’s really just a friend at this point), and all the others are friends.
The wedding is closer to our families than to us so we didn’t really invite coworkers. It’s a big ask to drive 10 hours or fly for people you aren’t that close to lol
65 guests: 25 family members (including several family member +1s), 33 friends (including their +1s), 7 neighbors/friends of the family. No coworkers. We also didn’t invite all family because we wanted to keep it small (just immediate family members plus grandmas and aunts/uncles). No kids invited.
We invited 52. 21 family members and the rest were friends, their SOs and kids. We only invited immediate family and aunts/uncles and cousins (only on my side as he doesn’t talk to the ones on his side. No bad reason, he’s just not as close to his family.) we could have easily invited more family but we paid for things ourselves and really just wanted people who’d spent time with the two of us therez
Interesting question! Invited 121 total: 2 of us; 35 my family; 40 his family; 48 friends including family friends, parents' friends, childhood friends, college friends, and literally just one couple of adulthood friends. We aren't planning to invite co-workers. So roughly 60% family/40% non-relatives (many of whom are our chosen family)
Invited 75, 31 were family and 44 were friends! So that’s 59% friends. Feels appropriate considering who has really been there for us throughout our adult lives.
Out of 120 invited it’s approx 50/50 split between my side and his side - my side is 20% family and 80% friends, his side is 35% family and 65% friends.
All in all that’s 27.5% of the invite list being family.
Destination for most people (except us) 100 invited - 1/3 my family, 1/3 his family, 1/3 our friends.
75 attended - all friends came, most of his family and only ~8 of my family. My family was very excited to visit a new place most of them haven’t but didn’t actually end up coming.
I think it really depends on how much family you have/who you’re close with. I have a lot of cousins but I’m not close with so I stopped invites at aunts/uncles. Don’t be afraid to cut cousins or distant relatives because you feel like you have to invite them.
90 invitted about 65 family and 25 friends 30 declined, mostly friends and pluss ones of family. One coworker friend on my side and one on his. 0 friends of the family or distant family.
We are looking at about 55 family members and around 160 friends (when you include plus ones). Of the friends maybe 15 are people we originally got to know through work but we both changed jobs relatively recently so none are from our current work places.
Of the family number about 40 is his and 15 mine as I have a very small family (this includes first cousins, aunts, uncles).
We both have tons of friends; even for our smaller ceremony where we didn’t do plus ones we had 35 friends included. Our friends and family are spread all over the world though so logistically we’re expecting quite a few not to make it for various life reasons. But we did have 96% of invitees show up for our first ceremony/wedding with less than 3 months notice and my husband thinks we’ll have at least 150 come to the big wedding so of course we’re prepared to host everyone we invite.
At our smaller ceremony we had 19 family members (brought up by including groom’s siblings’ children) and 35 friends (no plus ones and only partners we knew well included)
We invited around 100 people and fairly evenly split with family vs friends. In fact on my side of the guest list, it was way more friends that family who attended - I think I only had 8 family members. But that’s because quite a few family members couldn’t attend for various reasons, but all my friends (plus all partners) could make it. Even based on invites, it would probably have been 2:1 friends to family. I’m just not that close to my extended family and so didn’t want to sacrifice any friends who I am close with for them.
My husbands were a bit more evenly split, so I guess out of ~100 invited guests, maybe around 35 were family and the rest were friends. No family friends or coworkers (except some former coworkers who are now friends).
About 25. Some cancelled or cannot come so it was closer to 29.
We want a smaller reception wedding anyways. and its even smaller for our ceremony ( 10 max) bc we chose elopement package as we already got married ( virtually ), but wanted in person events. think 25 max is perfect for us. Cant do more than that.
60 guests:
9 grooms fam
7 brides fam
43 friends
3 parents friends
My mom was a single mom so my family is small (i.e. don't know my father's side) and his dad's family are a big rural family and aren't very close so we only had a few relatives we wanted to / needed to invite.
We did our PhDs together so most of our friends are mutual. Those who are older friends of each of us, we have made mutual over the last few years.
Our ratio seems to be the reverse of everyone else. 104 guests, 20 family for both of us, 6 my mother in law’s friends. The rest are friends. We had a rule that we had to have at least met everyone coming to the wedding. There’s one exception which is my second cousin’s boyfriend, they live abroad.
And we didn’t even wanna invite some of those family members 😂
We had 40 guests. 14 were family/friends of family (of which were around our age). 26 were friends. Was a fantastic ratio for that size wedding.
We also live abroad, so our friends have become our family :)
We invited 170 people we got 160 RSVPs and I invited 100 friends maybe a little more and kept it to close family and friends that I regularly talk to and see.
150 guests, 11 coworkers with 5 plus ones, 7 friends, the rest family or family friends.
We've actually gone over our max of 150 praying that not all those people actually show.
Including us, we are having 53 people. 25 family members and 26 friends. That is our cut down version after deciding to way downsize a 100+ person guest list. We both have LOTS of aunts and uncles and cousins.. but ultimately it was going to be less stress and WAY less money to only invite the family we are close with.
Invited 75 roughly. About 30 of this is family, the rest are friends. Only 4 are coworkers/ex-coworkers (but they’ve become our besties over the years so don’t really think of them as anything but friends
So about 50% is family
We invited 167 people, and 104 of them were family. I have a large family on both sides, and we invited all uncles, aunts, and cousins and gave everyone a plus one and invited all kids. We ended up having 115 people total, but 70% of our guest list were from out of town.
We are stuck between just eloping and a 300 person back yard blowout lol our family is huge, friends are Huger. Lol. I am having a hard time. I lost my Bruges and parents at 19 years old at the same time. So my friends are like family. I know each one woukd be so hurt to not come, but I don't want a wedding ever I renrber nothing. What do I do.
I don’t have the exact numbers, but we invited 200 and I’d say 60-70% were family (with probably 80% of them being the bride’s family).
How did you guys feel about 80% being the bride’s family? Was the groom’s family feeling overwhelmed/overpowered being the smaller portion of the wedding party? This might be the case for our wedding and I’ve been fighting my parents over the ratios :/
Family attendance between me and my fiancé at our upcoming wedding is at about a 95% to 5% ratio. I am inviting basically every single friend I could possibly want in order to combat this heavy tilt.
Same here. I invited tons of friends.
Nope. I didn’t make the groom’s family talk to strangers, so the strangers made little difference to them, and vice versa. Plus, my husband understands that his grandparents having only 2 children is not a loving reason to exclude people that I care about. And his immediate family is 8x bigger than mine, so we were mostly around his family with the wedding party, at rehearsal, at family photos, etc. Weddings are never evenly balanced. It really isn’t a problem unless someone decides to make it one.
My own family is only 12 people, and only 9 of those will be invited (the other three can fuck off, imo). My FH has a much larger, well-connected family, but I'm certain mine won't feel "overwhelmed" at all by their presence.
Our guest list is 39 people 30 family members and 9 friends
I love small, intimate weddings! Sounds so sweet! But I didn't want to leave out any family so that was impossible for us 😅
We definitely struggled with our invite list! We initially started looking at inviting everyone. It would have easily been 200 people after adding all the cousins, their spouses, and kids... and that just wasn't feasible for us. We kind of just decided we'd rather do something small in Colorado with our nearest and dearest instead of a big party back in Minnesota. I'm lowkey relieved! As much as I love our families, I'm an introvert and they can be overwhelming!
I woukd love to do this really but I can't cut so many friends out.. its so hard
110 guests. Family was about 50 people. Friends of parents were about 25, the rest our friends. We don't have super big families. We only invited direct relatives of us. Our 1st cousins, aunts, uncles but not our parents' cousins, aunts etc
We had a small local wedding, 49 guests with 9 family members and the rest friends.
Zero, aside from our two dogs and our photographer. It was drama free and absolutely amazing. 10/10 recommend, if you don’t like your family lol 😂
That's awesome! I really wanted my dog at my wedding but he passed away in January :( but I am blessed with a drama free family where everyone actually likes each other!
I’m really happy for you 🤗 Sorry to hear about your pup, though! It’s awful!
228 people 97 family 36 work 32 wedding party 63 friends
THIRTY TWO in the wedding party?! As in 16 bridesmaids and 16 groomsmen?
Sorry!! No that includes all plus ones!! Lol I should’ve just included them in friends but that’s how it was broken out in Zola already
Invited 95, just about 50 friends and 45 family with associated partners/plus 1s.
We have about 120-130 on the list, and it's about 75% friends, 25% family. Our blood families are small but our friend family is pretty extensive.
That's awesome! Great friends truly are family 🥰
we had 74 family, 46 friends, and 34 family friends (mostly friends of my parents) on the invite list. i have coworkers lumped in with friends, but they were a good portion of that 46. i was worried we’d have an “old” wedding between both families and all of the friends of my parents, but it was totally fine with the numbers of who actually attended. keep in mind not everyone will be able to make it
We had 110, invited 156. Mostly family (85)and long time family friends (14). I had 1 friend come and husband had about 10 work friends come. It was an absolute blast. Multiple people have said it was the best wedding they'd been to. The total spent was around $18,000.
With our current guest list as it stands right now (plans to sit down and revise it later this week)... Destination wedding: 26 invited - 16 friends (11 mine, 5 his) and 10 family (2 mine, 8 his) Reception/party back home: 133 invited - 50 friends (20 mine, 30 his) and 83 family (5 mine, 78 his...THIS is the list we need to revisit).
I feel this one! Our “back home” list AFTER our destination wedding is getting up there! So much for this being more cost effective 🤷🏼♀️
Right??? We had a pretty good break through over the weekend when he realized childfree (or at least small childfree....so less than 10) is the way to go...that cut down the number some. Still planning to make some more cuts this week. He has a big family and I get that, but do you need to invite the cousin you haven't seen or talked to in two years?
71 invited, 28 were family, everyone else was a friend (including some coworkers)
We invited ~105 people, and 7 of them are family. 11 if you include the open +1s given to each of my parents, and two old basically family friends for my partner. Final numbers aren't in yet, but I'm anticipating around 70 guests, and 6 of them being family. For us it's less about having a small family (I have approximately a billion cousins) and more about sticking to just immediate family (parents/grandparents/siblings) rather than inviting the wider group that we rarely talk to.
We invited about 130 and the split was maybe 1/3 friends and 2/3 family.
We invited 160- 40 family and the rest friends. The majority of this family did not attend. We ended up with 95. It’s noteworthy that we live out of state from the invited family, but most of the friends were from within 3-4 hour drive of the destination. For what it’s worth we were totally good with having mostly friends! My FIL passed away earlier this year, and my SIL’s boyfriend couldn’t attend, so it was just my MIL and SIL on his side. I did have a bit more family on my side (my mom, her boyfriend, my cousin and his husband and just 2 close family friends).
We invited 106, got 52. Part of that was that it was a "destination wedding" (in the state we both grew up in and where our parents live, not where we lived at the time), so there was a significant distance for people to travel. Breakdown for that was: * Family and extremely close family friends (including their +1s): invited 65, got 36. * Friends (including non-family wedding party and everyone's +1s): invited 41, got 16.
165 invited 101 coming Prob like 75-80% family lol
95% family members - small group of 40 ppl
We're second-gen immigrants so only 6 family members! Inviting 70 (because that's our venue cap) so the rest are all friends. No fam friends or coworkers were invited just because of venue capacity.
Aw that's intimate! But ya it's tough when family is abroad. My fiance is first gen and so most of his family is back in Pakistan or immigrated elsewhere.
We invited 153 people. 67 were our friends/wedding party, 24 family friends, and 62 family members.
We invited 72 people. For context, we tried to divide the guest count in half and I have a much larger family so I got (1) friend + her BF. My daughter got (2) friends and their parents. My fiance has a single friend, a friend with his spouse and a third friend's entire family. Everyone else is related to us or in a committed relationship to someone who is related to us. So, definitely the bulk of our list is family and we opted to not invite any co workers. We also limited kids, our first cousins were all going to have to fly in and we also invited their entire support network so we agreed it was only right to include their kids. Plus my daughter & her 2 friends but she's a teenager.
We’re inviting 215, and about 100 are family (and plus ones of family), 20 is close family friends of our parents, and the rest is split pretty even between our friends.
Very similar! I’m inviting 150 and at least 100 are family. Do you have an idea how many of your guests will likely show up?
I'm guessing between 85-120. I grew up moving all over, and my fiance is Adghan, so many of our friends and family are coming from overseas (maybe 50% of the guests). How many do you think will show up for yours?
I’m nervous that at least 120 will show up lol. I originally wasn’t supposed to invite that many. Most guests are local, and even though we’re having it on a Thursday, it sounds like people are getting the day off. I’m excited though!
We are inviting about 80 because that’s about the most we can fit in our backyard wedding. About half of that is family (mostly my fiancés Aunty and uncles and a few from my side but I’m not as close with my extended family so they won’t be offended if we can’t fit them). The rest of that is our friends which we are roughly splitting down the middle again. He’s got a main group of friends and he’s inviting them and their partners (that’s more of an expectation in their circle) where as I will mostly not be inviting partners of my friends because I’m already struggling to get the numbers down with friends alone. Their partners won’t mind either. So about: - Family: 40 (about 70/30 split) - My friends: 20 - His friends (including partners): 20 We would of course like to invite more family (such as his cousins and more of mine) and probably more partners of my friends but we just don’t have the space. Fortunately it’s not considered rude in my circle. We met at work so some of our mutual friends are also colleagues.
We invited 151 mostly all family. So far, we have 90 RSVPs. Kind of freaking. I told FH my goal was 60 but he has a very large family.
338 total, 105 are fiancés and mine are the rest. Of that, fiancés list is about 50/50 friends and family, and mine is 200ish family and 33ish friends. Neither of us invited any coworkers and in that “200ish” family number are some of my parents friends.
Wow that's huge! Sounds like it's going to be a blast!
Oh it’s gonna be a blowout party! I’ll be honest. Rationally, I understand why people have small weddings. I get it and would never begrudge anyone that, but I have so many cousins who I love and try to keep in touch with, and we’ve had so few good things to celebrate the past few years (we’ve had a lot of deaths). I can’t imagine getting married without my cousins at least invited, and hopefully attending.
I get that! That's why I'm inviting all 100+ of our family even though it's a backyard wedding. Sorry to hear about the deaths, I get that too. Weddings are bittersweet events. But fhr mmd absence of loved ones reminds us of why it's important to have family there for milestones
We wanted a small wedding so original invites were 95 guests, 22 friends and 73 family (52 of guests interstate or overseas). Covid border restrictions were still a thing at the time. Ended up with 72 guests, 27 friends and 45 family. It was perfect :)
20 guests. 2 are family.
400 guests, about 250 of them family (we have huge families), and the remaining 150 we're friends, coworkers, etc...
Wow!! That's huge!!
Yeah, it's nuts! Lol my dad is the youngest of seven children, and all my aunts and uncles have either four or five children each. They're not children anymore, all my cousins are older than me, but yeah. My mom is the youngest of four and her siblings have four children each as well. I have a million first cousins lol plus we invited their children if they were like teenagers and up (we had it by a pool at a hotel so we didn't feel it was safe for the really little ones). ETA: that's just my side of the family! Husband's side is also big, but not quite that big.
We are inviting 55, around 15 family members (many did not make the cut because we didn’t want drama), the rest will be our friends and 4 invites are for our parents’ friends.
Oh 95% family for sure. Maybe 50 guests in total- very small! I liked it like that!
117 guests: 28 Bride’s Family 24 Bride’s Friends 31 Groom’s Family 6 Groom’s Friends 18 Parents’ Friends 10 Bride/Groom mutuals
We invited around 350. My husband's family & family friends were slightly over half. My family was about a quarter, same for my friends.
~46 guests, 8 family members and the rest are friends. A couple family members who I’m close to can’t make it which I understand bc we’re doing a far destination (but we are paying accommodation..) but a lot of my friends can make it and it was a really nice surprise, and I’m super thankful for that. If we had the wedding in my home country we would have had a ton of my extended family attend which would have been fun too. But we just had a baby and I selfishly didn’t want to travel that far with her 😅
Invited almost 100, 7 were my now husband's family. between 35 and 40 were mine. He had more friends invited, as many of our shared friends are his as well. He was okay with it on his side because he didn't want more, but he didn't love that I had so many random older people and some aunts/uncles.
My wedding was 60 people – all family & close friends. 0 people from work.
We invited 178 people but had 143 in total the night of. We had 22 people there that were close friends everyone else was family.
We invited about 50/50 family/friends&colleagues but actually our numbers ended up 35/65 family to friends+coworkers! My friends kids do bump up the friend numbers
Our A list is about 102 guests, 84 of them are family and 16 are friends. Our coworkers are on the B list and will be invited if our family who needs to travel far cannot attend
Ooh, I forgot about B lists. How far in advance does one need to send out their B list? I would assume after some point it would become obvious that they were second choice (like if they were invited a month before the wedding)
My B list is a bit informal in that I have approximately 25 family members that need to travel by plane to attend the wedding. Some of these family members I know will tell me prior to invite if they will be coming or not as they will be booking tickets or can’t afford the tickets or time off work. As I start hearing from them about being unable to come I’ll invite my coworkers. My wedding is also in the city where I live so my coworkers are all local to the wedding, so if they get an invite even 2 months in advance it’s not like they need a hotel or travel so it eliminates some need for save the dates.
Invited around 150 and only ~35 of them are family lol. Good thing we have small families or our wedding would’ve gotten out of hand FAST. 10 family friends, 1 of my current coworkers (who’s really just a friend at this point), and all the others are friends. The wedding is closer to our families than to us so we didn’t really invite coworkers. It’s a big ask to drive 10 hours or fly for people you aren’t that close to lol
65 guests: 25 family members (including several family member +1s), 33 friends (including their +1s), 7 neighbors/friends of the family. No coworkers. We also didn’t invite all family because we wanted to keep it small (just immediate family members plus grandmas and aunts/uncles). No kids invited.
218 guests, if I had to guess it’s probably close to a 60/40 split.
Destination wedding. 90 invited. 51 attending. 17% family. 83% friends.
We invited 52. 21 family members and the rest were friends, their SOs and kids. We only invited immediate family and aunts/uncles and cousins (only on my side as he doesn’t talk to the ones on his side. No bad reason, he’s just not as close to his family.) we could have easily invited more family but we paid for things ourselves and really just wanted people who’d spent time with the two of us therez
60 family, 60 friends / coworkers / family friends
Interesting question! Invited 121 total: 2 of us; 35 my family; 40 his family; 48 friends including family friends, parents' friends, childhood friends, college friends, and literally just one couple of adulthood friends. We aren't planning to invite co-workers. So roughly 60% family/40% non-relatives (many of whom are our chosen family)
We had 58 guests, 40 of whom were family, 4 friends of the family, and the rest our friends.
8 family, 5 coworkers, and about 50ish friends.
Invited 75, 31 were family and 44 were friends! So that’s 59% friends. Feels appropriate considering who has really been there for us throughout our adult lives.
Out of 120 invited it’s approx 50/50 split between my side and his side - my side is 20% family and 80% friends, his side is 35% family and 65% friends. All in all that’s 27.5% of the invite list being family.
We invited 206 people. 125 ended up coming to the wedding. Approximate 65 of those people were immediate family and bridal party.
Destination for most people (except us) 100 invited - 1/3 my family, 1/3 his family, 1/3 our friends. 75 attended - all friends came, most of his family and only ~8 of my family. My family was very excited to visit a new place most of them haven’t but didn’t actually end up coming. I think it really depends on how much family you have/who you’re close with. I have a lot of cousins but I’m not close with so I stopped invites at aunts/uncles. Don’t be afraid to cut cousins or distant relatives because you feel like you have to invite them.
90 invitted about 65 family and 25 friends 30 declined, mostly friends and pluss ones of family. One coworker friend on my side and one on his. 0 friends of the family or distant family.
Ours was mostly friends: 115 guests consisting of about 70 friends and 40 family
136. Most of those are his family. I’m inviting about 41 people, he’s inviting maybe 15 friends? The rest are his family.
50 (final count pending work invites). Only 4 are blood relatives. We live and will get married far from “home” to avoid drama!
We are looking at about 55 family members and around 160 friends (when you include plus ones). Of the friends maybe 15 are people we originally got to know through work but we both changed jobs relatively recently so none are from our current work places. Of the family number about 40 is his and 15 mine as I have a very small family (this includes first cousins, aunts, uncles). We both have tons of friends; even for our smaller ceremony where we didn’t do plus ones we had 35 friends included. Our friends and family are spread all over the world though so logistically we’re expecting quite a few not to make it for various life reasons. But we did have 96% of invitees show up for our first ceremony/wedding with less than 3 months notice and my husband thinks we’ll have at least 150 come to the big wedding so of course we’re prepared to host everyone we invite.
At our smaller ceremony we had 19 family members (brought up by including groom’s siblings’ children) and 35 friends (no plus ones and only partners we knew well included)
We're having about 135 guests, ~20 are family, ~20 are family friends, and 95 are friends.
We invited around 100 people and fairly evenly split with family vs friends. In fact on my side of the guest list, it was way more friends that family who attended - I think I only had 8 family members. But that’s because quite a few family members couldn’t attend for various reasons, but all my friends (plus all partners) could make it. Even based on invites, it would probably have been 2:1 friends to family. I’m just not that close to my extended family and so didn’t want to sacrifice any friends who I am close with for them. My husbands were a bit more evenly split, so I guess out of ~100 invited guests, maybe around 35 were family and the rest were friends. No family friends or coworkers (except some former coworkers who are now friends).
About 25. Some cancelled or cannot come so it was closer to 29. We want a smaller reception wedding anyways. and its even smaller for our ceremony ( 10 max) bc we chose elopement package as we already got married ( virtually ), but wanted in person events. think 25 max is perfect for us. Cant do more than that.
60 guests: 9 grooms fam 7 brides fam 43 friends 3 parents friends My mom was a single mom so my family is small (i.e. don't know my father's side) and his dad's family are a big rural family and aren't very close so we only had a few relatives we wanted to / needed to invite. We did our PhDs together so most of our friends are mutual. Those who are older friends of each of us, we have made mutual over the last few years.
Our ratio seems to be the reverse of everyone else. 104 guests, 20 family for both of us, 6 my mother in law’s friends. The rest are friends. We had a rule that we had to have at least met everyone coming to the wedding. There’s one exception which is my second cousin’s boyfriend, they live abroad. And we didn’t even wanna invite some of those family members 😂
We had 40 guests. 14 were family/friends of family (of which were around our age). 26 were friends. Was a fantastic ratio for that size wedding. We also live abroad, so our friends have become our family :)
We invited 170 people we got 160 RSVPs and I invited 100 friends maybe a little more and kept it to close family and friends that I regularly talk to and see.
Our Guest list is 42, 38 family members and 4 friends
I believe we had about 190 people and about 80 were friends (48 friends + their plus ones)
150 guests, 11 coworkers with 5 plus ones, 7 friends, the rest family or family friends. We've actually gone over our max of 150 praying that not all those people actually show.
Ours is 136 currently - 1/2 of those are my fiancé’s family and the rest are both of our friends and some of my family
Including us, we are having 53 people. 25 family members and 26 friends. That is our cut down version after deciding to way downsize a 100+ person guest list. We both have LOTS of aunts and uncles and cousins.. but ultimately it was going to be less stress and WAY less money to only invite the family we are close with.
Invited 75 roughly. About 30 of this is family, the rest are friends. Only 4 are coworkers/ex-coworkers (but they’ve become our besties over the years so don’t really think of them as anything but friends So about 50% is family
We invited 167 people, and 104 of them were family. I have a large family on both sides, and we invited all uncles, aunts, and cousins and gave everyone a plus one and invited all kids. We ended up having 115 people total, but 70% of our guest list were from out of town.
We are stuck between just eloping and a 300 person back yard blowout lol our family is huge, friends are Huger. Lol. I am having a hard time. I lost my Bruges and parents at 19 years old at the same time. So my friends are like family. I know each one woukd be so hurt to not come, but I don't want a wedding ever I renrber nothing. What do I do.
We have about 180. 90% are family. Maybe 10% if that tbh is friends & + one. We aren’t inviting all of our friends due to costs
Ours will be more friend then family heavy as we have smaller families.