How many people should I invite to my wedding?
This is a question that seems to have a lot of answers across the internet these days and you tend to get all sorts of answers related to the subject.
As a former wedding professional, I’ve covered very small weddings during COVID, ones with more than 500 wedding guests, celebrity weddings, and just everyday people like you and me.
Each wedding however has the exact same question that couples need to ask, How many guests should I invite to the wedding?
Well, today, I want to explore that a bit and give you some great advice and my take on the question, so let’s get started!
First, why do we invite guests to weddings in the first place?
The answer usually falls into two answers and they are usually the following:
To have friends and family members to celebrate your special day
To impress friends and family with your wedding
Sometimes it’s a mix of both answers and each is perfectly okay, after all, your wedding is one of the most important days of your life, so celebrate it!
The tricky situation is the number of people to have at the wedding and honestly, it boils down to one VERY important piece of information, your wedding budget.
Wedding Guests Tend to Cost the Most
When you think about weddings, couples tend to believe that venues are the most expensive piece of the wedding budget, but truthfully more times than anything else, it’s the guests that rack up your costs.
Paying for a venue, cocktail hour, wedding DJ, alcohol, dinner, wedding cake, and parting gifts are just a few things that you pretty much do JUST for the guests. Without them, you really don’t need a wedding day.
According to Value Penguin, a data source provider, wedding guests can cost somewhere in the range of $150 to $500 per person depending on where you live and how extravagant your wedding day will be. That number is closely in line with the Knot and Wedding Wire’s numbers.
Let’s say that each guest will cost you roughly $150, which is on the low end.
50 guests would cost you $7,500, 100 of them would cost $15,000 and 150 would roughly cost $22,500! based on the wedding guest national average, 105 guests, you’d be looking at a rough cost of $15,750.
Sure, there are always exceptions and cost variations, but the overall point is that for every 50 or so guests, plan on doubling your guest budget. Something that I’ll chat further about in a bit.
Average cost of wedding guests
With costs being the major factor in weddings, it should give you something to consider when pre-planning the wedding day.
One thing I can tell you is that you can save money in various forms, like having more simple meals such as BBQ’s dinner’s instead of steak dinners, getting wedding cupcakes or donuts instead of a large wedding cake, and limiting the amount of booze that you offer for free, perhaps offer it freely during a certain time then open a cash bar.
How many guests should I invite?
I recommend as many as you can based on YOUR BUDGET, not what others have done and not what any website tells you either.
Your wedding is unique and you can’t compare it to your friend’s wedding, they have different visions than you do and more than likely a different budget too.
Let’s say you booked Silver Hearth Lodge and want just under 100 guests to attend. You’d be looking at $6,350 for the venue and another $15,000 for the guests, roughly $21,350.
That’s actually very affordable in today’s marketplace.
If you have a $25,000 budget, then you have giggle room for your dress, a photographer, and a few other things too.
Best Way to Figure out Who to Invite to the Wedding?
One of the best ways to figure out if you should invite them to your wedding is to ask yourself a couple of questions, think of this as a flowchart. Use the following guide to help determine if you should invite them to your wedding or not.
Have you talked to this person in the last year?
If you have, then continue.
If you haven’t seen or heard from them in the last year, consider, skipping them.
Have you spent time outside of work?
Coworkers can be a bit of a tricky thing, as many times they are just that, coworkers and nothing more.
If you have spent time with them outside of the work environment, continue to the next question, otherwise, skip them from your list.
Has your finance ever met the person?
If they have met them then continue, if they have not, mark them off the list.
Finally, would this person invite you to their wedding?
While a bit of a tricky question, I want you to imagine them getting married and ask yourself, “Would they invite me to their wedding?”
If you think the answer is yes, then invite them to your wedding. If you think it’s no or you are questioning that answer, mark them off the list.
While there is no foolproof way to figure out who to invite to your wedding, having a little bit of guidance should help get you closer to figuring out if they need to be invited or not.
As an alternative, I would suggest hiring your videographer to do a live stream of the wedding and send out a secondary list of e-vites to those that didn’t quite make the list but you’d still like for them to participate in seeing the ceremony.
