When planning your guest list, your wedding budget is probably the main consideration. But whether you’re having fifty or five hundred guests, you’ll have some of the same concerns.

Wedding planners say that between 10% and 20% of your invited guests won’t be able to attend. You might not want to invite 120% of the venue’s seating capacity – or your budget – but bear in mind that a large number of your guests may send regrets.

It’s a very thoughtful move to ask your parents, and future parents-in-law, about who they’d like to invite. Your parents may just want to invite a few close friends, or they may want to invite friends who included them in their children’s weddings, to return the favor. They might also have work colleagues to include. Just make sure they’re clear about the guest list numbers, so dad isn’t inviting everyone he’s ever played golf with!

Sending a wedding invitation can be seen as a request for a gift, so it was once considered tacky to invite guests who couldn’t possibly attend the wedding. I couldn’t disagree with this more! When I was living abroad, I got an invitation to a college friend’s wedding, and I was so pleased to be remembered, even if we both knew I couldn’t make it to the celebration. So send invitations, even to far-away friends!

When sending invitations, you must include the husbands and wives of your guests, even if you’ve never met, say, your officemate’s spouse. You should also invite long-term partners of wedding guests, especially if the couple is living together. Depending on space, it’s also nice to include dates for your single guests, but you aren’t obligated to invite them. Try to include a plus-one, if at all possible, for out-of-town guests or other guests who might not know very many other attendees.

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