How many invitations do I need to order?

Wedding planning is hard.  There are so many pieces to try and coordinate. Often you are asked “how many guests are you expecting?” Most people can answer that question pretty quickly.  The guest list has been made and numbers calculated so you can get a venue the right size and order enough food for all your guests.

One of the first questions I ask clients is “how many invitations will you need?” I always follow up with “how many guests are you expecting?”  More often than not they give me their guest count as an answer to both those questions.  It is one of the only things that is NOT guest count you will encounter while planning your wedding so it can be confusing.  

So how many invitations do you need?  I always suggest counting addresses.  You will send one invitation to each household.  If there are multiple adults living in the same house you will want to send one to each family unit.  So if mom lives with her adult son and his spouse, mom would get an invitation and son and spouse would get a separate one.  Typically you will need about 60% of the guest count.  So if you have 200 guests you will need about 120 invitations.  I always suggest adding 5-10 more so you have a keepsake and in case there are last minute people that get added to the guest list.

So if I were to ask you “how many invitations do you need?” I hope you feel better prepared to answer the question.
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