Do you know how many people exactly to invite? Have you already set your wedding date? Have you set your wedding budget? If the answer is now, don't worry. These are some of the most difficult questions to answer you will be faced with during the planning process. There are many difficult tasks in the initial wedding planning process such as making the guest list. As you make your decisions, you may find yourself making compromises due to parental, budgetary, venue capacity, location and many other forces.

Wedding ceremonies mean different things to different people. You have to make a decision if your wedding is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime event or smaller more intimate celebration. The most significant limiting factor is money. Your budget limits the number of guests you can invite more than anything else. After you establish the reception budget, you can quickly do the math and decide the maximum number of guests you can afford to invite.

More than $16 billion is spent on wedding receptions in the America. The wedding reception will most likely account for the biggest chunk of your wedding budget. It is not uncommon that close to half of the total wedding budget is spent on the wedding reception.

The overwhelming majority of reception sites charge per-head. If your reception budget is $6000, and the cost per head is $60.00, you could have no more than 100 guests. You have many options to reduce expenses such as buying your own alcohol, having a buffet dinner instead of a served dinner. Unquestionably, you have to take budgetary restrictions into account when organizing the guest list.

If your parents are footing the bill for your wedding, you are going to have to respect their input for the final count. The larger part of the wedding your parents finance, the more you may have to listen to them. The more friends and relatives you have to invite, the longer the guest list is going to be.

Money is not the only factor affecting the size of your reception. Your guest list should also be affected by the size of the reception site. Be sure that you don't fall in love with a venue until you are sure that it can accommodate all the people you plan to invite.

Historically, the bride and groom's family invite half of the total number of guests. More often than not, the major check writers are calling the shots. If you can't live with that, you and your fianc'e should be prepared to pay for your wedding. As a consequence, you'll be able to decide the majority of the guest list.