How Many Invitations Do You Need?
Before you place your order for invitations you need to make a pretty solid guest list. Here’s a guideline of who to consider inviting. Of course you don’t have to invite everyone that falls into these categories, and most likely you won’t. The capacity of the room needs to be factored in as well as your budget and style. Are you hoping to have a lot of people or will this be a more intimate event. But the following is a pretty good checklist to get you started:
- All the close family you want to invite on the list? Good.
- How about extended family?
- Now do the same thing with friends. Close friends, then the next group of friends.
- If this is a mitzvah check your child’s list too. School friends, neighborhood buddies, religious school friends, teammates, camp friends all will probably need to be considered as well.
- Anyone from work that you’d like to include?
- Anyone that you’d like to invite a guest of their choosing? For example: Ms. Evy Jacob and Guest
Once you have a pretty good idea of who you’re inviting, think about how many invitations this will mean. Not every single person will get a separate invitation. Husbands and wives will usually receive one invitation for both of them, families will often get only one invitation, you get the idea. Now you know how many invitations you need.
But to be really sure that you’ll have enough invitations, please order extras. There is always someone that you forgot to put on the list no matter how carefully you make it. Believe me. This happens all the time. Then there’s the B list. You know, the people you would invite if there were no budget or room constraints to deal with. These are the guests who will receive invitations if some replies come back as regrets.
So how many extra invitations should you order? A good rule of thumb is 10% or 15% extra for a smaller list of say 100 invitations. So if you need 100 invitations order 110 or 115. For a larger list it’s probably a good idea to order at least 25 extra invitations.
I know that everyone is trying to stay within a budget and it seems wasteful to order extra invitations, but I have never heard anyone say that they were sorry they did this, as a matter of fact, people often wish they had ordered even more. And one more thing… keep at least one for yourself as a keepsake from the celebration.