Limited Seating – Wedding Etiquette

Limited Seating At My Wedding. How Do I Handle It?

Hello — I am really nervous about my upcoming wedding because the venue has a maximum guest of 75. How do I send out invitations (many are out-of-towners; many have more than one child) and at the same time help ensure we don’t go over our limit of 75 guests? Is it okay to put something in the invite like “Seating Limited – please RSVP early to secure your seat?” This seems like such a tricky maneuver. I was also thinking, in terms of kids, would it be okay to say “Due to limited seating, we are unable to accommodate children at this time. Once all RSVPs are received, we will be better able to determine if any extra seats may be offered to those who have children that want to attend.”

I also would like to know about the other part of my question pertaining to the Guest Limit. Whether there are kids or not – we can’t go over 75 people. It’s hard to just invite 75 people only, because obviously all of them may not be able to make it and if they can’t we’d like to invite others to fill their seats. Can we put some kind of statement in the invite that mentions the limited seating – but doesn’t make the person feel like they should not come in order to make room for others…?

Wedding Queen

Please don’t handle it this way. Would you like to get an invitation of this sort? You’re basically saying, “We have other people who we’d rather invite, but if they cannot attend then we would like to have your children as second choices”. Invite the people you want to include, period. If there are extra seats after everyone RSVP’s then so be it. The only way to handle this correctly is to send out invitations for 75 guests OR ask the venue if they can offer you a larger room if you go over 75. I suppose, if you are under 75 guests, and your cousin calls and mentions her three kids you could then say “Sure, we have room, bring them along”, but there really is no polite way to handle this in a written invitation, sorry.

See Also

How to word my “limited seating” wedding invitation?

I am having a wedding in a location that only has 50 seats give or take a few. I do not know how to invite 120 people to my wedding and reception without sounding mean or informal because I want them all to come to the reception but I just can’t have them all at the ceremony. There is plenty of room at the reception but not at the ceremony, thus the issue. I have to have all the invites say the same thing, its going to be too big of hassle to make separate invites…how should I word that I only have 50 seats at the ceremony?

Wedding Queen

That is setting up for a true disaster so I would recommend you don’t do that.. You can’t send out an invitation to 150 people for your wedding when your ceremony area will only accomodate 50. Either have 2 sets of invites typed up ——–some only for the reception and some for the ceremony and reception. Or else tone down your invite list to only 50 total. If your reception hall is large enough and you want more people at the reception, then two invites is the way to go.