How to make a wedding guest list, and how to cut it

Every guest adds food, drink, a chair and a share of the venue, so the list drives the budget. Couples in The Knot’s study of 2025 US weddings had 117 guests on average and spent about $292 a guest, $34,000 in all. In the UK, Bridebook’s survey of more than 7,000 couples found an average of 80 guests, with 11% fewer people invited to the main reception than the year before. Its cost figures run at about £278 a guest, and smaller weddings cost more per head.

Australian couples shrink their plans as they go. Easy Weddings found couples expected 108 guests and ended up with 85, and the guest list was their second biggest source of stress after the budget.

Agree the total with whoever is paying and check it against the venue’s capacity before anyone writes a name.

No rule says the list must be divided a particular way. Anna Post, writing for Inside Weddings, describes two common splits: equal thirds between the couple and each set of parents, or half for the couple and a quarter for each family. Whatever you choose, nobody gets to overrule anybody else, and the merged list should be read by everyone so no one assumes someone else invited Aunt Ruth.

Who pays changes the split. Inside Weddings suggests splitting the parents’ places evenly even when one side pays more, while couples paying their own way can keep more places for friends. Bridebook warns that both sets of parents will want a long list of their friends whether or not they pay toward it. It suggests settling each side’s share early, in quarters or in proportion to the size of each family.

Post’s advice is that dropping all second cousins, all colleagues or all gym friends is easier to explain than dropping one person, and that a rule only works if it applies to everyone.

Inside Weddings suggests leaving off anyone neither of you has spoken to in more than a year, and people you only ever see at other friends’ events. If you wouldn’t spend an evening with them on your own, they don’t need a seat. For relatives, invite whole tiers, such as all first cousins, though relatives abroad you have never met can be an exception.

Bridebook’s advice on exes is to invite them only if you are both genuinely on good terms with them, and on parents’ friends it says you can fairly question anyone who isn’t immediate family or whom your partner hasn’t seen in ten years.

Some couples keep a second list and invite from it as the first wave declines. Post advises against it, because guests can find out they were a second choice, and says the best plan is to invite everyone at once. Inside Weddings calls sending invitations in stages very risky.

If you use one anyway, send the first invitations early enough that the second wave doesn’t look like a last-minute fill-in, draw the B list from a different circle of friends, and never give a B-list guest a reply date earlier than the day their invitation arrives. A B list rarely works for a destination wedding.

Spouses, fiancés and live-in partners are invited with their partner, whether or not you know them. Post calls a plus-one for single guests optional but kind, especially for the wedding party. Bridebook and Easy Weddings add long-term partners and guests who won’t know anyone; colleagues and distant relatives can come alone. Name exactly who is invited on the envelope: the guest alone, the guest and partner by name, or the guest and guest.

For an adults-only wedding, Bridebook advises saying so early, ideally with the save the date, addressing envelopes to the named adults rather than the whole family, and deciding exceptions such as children in the wedding party before invitations go out. Post’s rule applies here too: don’t make an exception for one friend’s children and not a sibling’s.

You don’t have to invite your boss. Etiquette consultants quoted by SUCCESS say there is no obligation unless you are close, and that you shouldn’t over-explain to anyone who isn’t invited. If you manage people, invite colleagues outside your own team, and if one direct report is invited, invite them all.

Etiquette consultant Jodi RR Smith, quoted by The Muse, uses a rule of half: if you are inviting about half of a group, invite the whole group, and if fewer than a third, you don’t need to invite the group. Invite coworkers you already see outside work. Bridebook’s compromise is to invite a handful of colleagues to the drinks and dancing rather than the ceremony.

Post’s rule of thumb is that 10 to 20% of invited guests decline. Inside Weddings expects about 80% of guests to come to a local wedding and only 40 to 50% to a destination wedding. Neither figure comes from a survey, so treat them as a guide: invite to your venue’s capacity, not beyond it on the hope that people will decline.