At least in my case, family. My family is really big and loves parties, his family is really big and loves parties. That quickly becomes a 250-300 person guest list.

Getting engaged was what made my fiancé have to come to terms with how phenomenally different we, and was the reason we eventually called it off and split. She had a big family, a huge professional network, and a massive social circle. I am completely estranged from my family, work in a small business where 95% of my shift is just me and while I like my coworkers, we’re not close. I’m sociable but I rarely make “friends”. My invite list was my dog and two buddies, enough to fill a best man (obviously my dog) and two groomsmen. It’s been a long time since that all transpired, but it still hurts a bit that what we thought was going to be a life defining moment and a foundation of the future ended up being the basis of recognizing “we are too different”.

My wife and I invited around 200 to our reception. I guess you could call it mostly “tertiary characters” (ugh, just typing that makes me feel like I’m falling into Main Character Syndrome).

We probably had around 30 friends (quick tally), then immediate family accounted for a dozen more, then extended relatives pushed us over 200. My mother and my paternal grandfather both came from larger families, so you get lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins that way. +1s definitely inflate that figure, too.

Am I super close with them all? No, but I was still happy to have them there. I generally like my extended family (fortunate in this day and age, I know!).

200 might seem like a lot, but I can see it.

I actually got married last Saturday, we had about 120 guests.

Between close friends, family, people that you can’t see as often because they live far and the +1s (and in the case of a guest in a polycule +2s) it goes up pretty quickly.

From the top of my head, we had about 20 family members, 20 friends from work, 25 people from the LARP we organize, another 25 from the LARP we play at, 8 bridesmaid+groomsmen, then a handful of friends from our other social circles.

I guess it depends of your definition of tertiary character: not all people we see every week, but it doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like to if we had the time and it made any kind of sense in the realities of adult life.

Commenting just to counterbalance - my wedding was like six friends at a rose garden without permission. My parents are separated and my wife’s weren’t great with travel, so we eloped.

Plus ones

I have 10 friends I want to invite, they have 10 friends.

40 guests.

I’m 1 of 4 children. That’s 8 guests. If they were the same. 16 guests.

Over half way to 100 in just friends and immidiate family.

I have a dozen cousins from both sides. 24 guests. If they did, 24 guests.

Friends, immidiate family, and cousins. 100+

I have 3 best friends and at least 7 friends that have/will/would invite me to their weddings.

It adds up quick when you double then double again.

My dad was a general contractor. The plumber he used was Italian, the woman he married was Italian. They had around 800 people at their wedding. The wedding cost about $150,000. And they walked away with about $20,000 extra in gifted money. They had 8 groomsmen and 8 bridesmaids.

No, you’re not a loser, just some people have life on easy mode.

This was about 25 years ago too.

100 is pretty easy to get to. I have 60 people on one side of my family alone. But for an average person, let’s do a count. You’ve got say 8 immediate family members, including their partners. Your partner does too. Your dad’s side has 10 people you want to invite. That’s only two families of 5, so that’s a low estimate for a lot of people. Your mom’s side has two families of 5 you want to invite. Now your partner has the same. Lets keep it small and invite only 10 of your friends, so 20 with their partners. Your partner wants 10 friends as well. You are now at 96 people.

That’s your immediate families, 10 relatives from each side, and 10 friends for you and 10 friends for your partner only.

One of my colleagues has 104 first cousins who she wanted to invite. Catholic families can be BIG.

We had less than 25 people at ours, city hall wedding with a late lunch afterwards and everyone home by 6pm. Spent the money we saved on buying a house instead, and the small number of people kept the day feeling really chill. We had a long engagement and kept putting it off because we were dreading having an expensive ceremony with everyone we’ve ever met in attendance…and then one day we just realised we can do whatever we want.

The sliding scales of inviting all the people you want to have there and avoiding people getting pissed off if they don’t get an invite (or similar political reasons) are only limited by the financial means available.

100 is a relatively easy target to reach for most people. Family and friends and their +1’s and children gets you there pretty quick.

You invite the people you want to be there. That applies to both you and your soon to be spouse. It also applies to your parents if they’re paying (and sometimes even if they’re not). It’s also a great excuse to see people that you haven’t seen for a long long time.

It’s also extremely normal to invite family.

Now double the number because most of those people will bring a plus one, and add 20% cause that’s children that will come (unless you say no to kids which is becoming more popular).

Great, now your list of 20-30 people is over a hundred.

Of course you can have smaller weddings, but you will have to explain a lot to a lot of people, including family.

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To give an example, I invited my brother, my two sisters, my parents, and my grandparents to my wedding. I also invited some coworkers and friends, I think like 6-10 I can’t remember.

My wife had even fewer friends to invite. About the same size family. But her parents wanted to invite several people we had never ever met before.

We had 140 people. The numbers sound small up until the minute you start writing invites. Then you realize just how many people “have to come”.

The moms know a lot of people who they want to invite, and sometimes the aunts as well… The size of your wedding doesn’t make you a loser or not, ofc, and if it had been up to my wife (to a certain extent, ofc, she’s also a girly girl who wants what she wants, lol) we might’ve just planned a 20-30 people small and cheap get-together but who can deny the MIL’s requests. 🤷

I don’t know you. You might be a loser, but you probably aren’tish. However, not having 200+ guests at your wedding does not mean you are a loser. Having only a handful of guests at your wedding does not mean you are a loser.

Usually there’s an element of one or both parties getting married have a familial tradition, culture, and/or history of large marriages as well. Often at least one of the people getting married comes from a large family, but not uncommon for both. Also, one or both sides tends to have money and/or generational wealth. Having that kind of money means you can afford a big wedding with 200+ people, but also generational wealth tends to give people and families the luxury of attaining and maintaining long term & multi-generational ties as well as a sense of duty to one another.

But also, it might be easier to to have 200+ people come to your wedding than you realize, depending on circumstances. Like if you and your future spouse come from large / larger families, don’t have tons of mutual friends/acquaintances, and things like that, and you invite pretty much every relative, acquaintance, friend, coworker, neighbor and so on, you’ll probably get more folks in attendance than you might expect. Particularly if you give them long enough notice that they can plan for it and you’ve picked a good location as well as time of year to make it happen. Also wouldn’t hurt to provide support for accommodations, food, travel for those who might struggle to afford them.

I got lucky in a sense: planned for 50, number kept ballooning, but then oh no, covid restrictions, we get exactly 12 people in the room! Goodbye 3rd cousin by marriage who’d be all pissy if they weren’t invited.