Number of people at your wedding?

DF and I finally sat down and started working on a guest list for the wedding, so we can have some sort of idea of how many to include. We listed each person individually, not by families. He came up with around 75 people. I had 285 people on my list.

Now he's makeing a huge deal out of the fact that I know so many people. I'm involved in alot of different things. I have a lot of relatives. And I personally know everyone on the list and want them at my wedding. I left off people I dont know very well or haven't talked to in a while.

I want my friends from the UK to come, and thats about 25 there.
Relatives add up to about approx. 90.
Family Friends: approx. 100
My friends: approx 40
Other people who have been involved in my life: approx 30

I know not everyone we invite is going to come. I didn't realize I know so many people. I guess I'd never really thought about it before. I took a few people off the list, but there isn't anyone on there now that I would want to leave off.

285!! that is a LOT!! 90 relatives is a lot!! is that close family or every last cousin?

The first time I got married we had 30 people.  If you thought that was small, at my second marriage there were 4, including bride & groom.  I know that's not for everyone but if you want to cut down numbers I would start by cutting out anyone you haven't seen or spoken to in more than a year.

No, that's leaving out quite a few cousins.   

I already cut out everyone I havent spoken to in a year.

I doubt many of my UK friends will be able to make it over. About 35-40 of my relatives are elderly, so I'm thinking several of them won't be able to make it either. (but they would be forever insulted if they didn't get an invitation). Some are live too far away (Paris, CA, Germany, etc) but I still keep in touch with them via email/IM.

DF is making a huge deal that I know so many more people than him. 

Yes, certainly not everyone will be able to show up, but 285 is a lot on one side.

We had 100 people at ours and only 30 were from DH's side, but we sent out equal numbers of invites (to be fair).  I just had more luck in responses.  Most all of our attendees were relatives.

Wow....285 is a lot!  And this is coming from someone with roughly 60 first cousins.  I don't even know how many second/third/whatever else cousins there are...they're always moving around too fast to count them all at family gatherings   But I'd never invite all of them to my wedding.  I don't even think I could match up all of their faces with their names.   

You can't count on people not showing up...they may surprise you!

I guess my best advice would be to set a level beyond which you won't invite anyone from the family (ie: no second cousins....or no cousins at all if you aren't particularly close to them).  And...100 family friends?     I don't think I know even close to 100 people I would count as anything beyond an acquaintance.

Everyone has their own idea of what they want for their wedding.  We're having about 30 people...only our nearest and dearest.  But...well...I've been to a lot of weddings, and none of them had even close to 285 people on both sides, much less just one.   

as for the 100 family friends: My sister is and I was homeschooled. Several homschool families have 5 or more kids, so with 5 families I would invite, that's about 40 people.    (the kids are all between mine and her age, she's 7 years younger)

I'm ready to say f it and elope. 

As for cousins, I know 2ed and third cousins better than i know some of my 1st cousins. so they will be invited, but the 1st one's arent.

Yeah wow 285 that's a whole lot of people.  Do you/your parents come from big families?  That's getting up to the size of Indian weddings!  Obviously you can have a wedding/reception for that many but are you able to do so?

Duuuude— that's a lot of people! 

I'm having 18 at my wedding here in the UK. Actually am glad I'm having it here so that I didn't feel I had to invite my relatives. (Also, everyone is very understanding... as long as they get a party in their hometown at some point. )

We had 20 at our wedding in Half Moon Bay, CA.  It was perfect, even though a few of my friends were hurt we didnt invite them.  You just have to make decisions that work for you.  I didnt want to look back on wedding photos years from now and wonder "who the heck is that?"

We had three people at my wedding, my mom, my step-dad and my step-sister.  I'm glad we went that route because a wedding is a very personal thing and I couldn't imagine having a lot of people there.

We did have a reception dinner a few days later and more people were invited to that (still only very close family and friends though).

We invited 250 in total to our wedding in the US. Many of those people though we knew wouldn't be able to actually make it to the wedding, but we wanted to make the gesture of inviting them anyway.

We had 180 actually show up at the wedding, which included 14 people from the UK. It was fantastic!

In the UK though, people aren't as used to big Amercian-style weddings. Many Brits find inviting more than 90 people to be OTT. My British husband felt that way in the beginning, but he came around in the end and loved our wedding. In fact, everyone did. All the UK guests who came kept talking about how great it was. Bottom line, I say invite as many people as you like. It's a celebration and the more people you have that around you that you love the better.

Good luck!

We had about 50, most from the UK and were friends of dh, I think I only had like 8 Americans, most of which were my friends (too many older relatives who could not make the trip).  That's what worked for us though.  Good luck!   

i had 85 and it was the PERFECT number...honestly.  we invited about 120.

at our uk reception we have about 50 and that was great too!

Remember that you will be expected to walk around and chat with all the guests, which means the more guests, the less time you will have to spend with your husband.

I say invite everyone you want to! As far as you knowing a lot more people- he'll just have to get over it. That was a big factor in deciding where the wedding and the reception would be for me- that everyone that i wanted to come and everyone that wanted to come, could. That was VERY important to me. But since you're inviting so many, maybe you should set your rsvp date kinda early though so you have a better idea of how many people will actually come.