How Many Invitations To Send

[bean527]

I'm American and my fiance is Egyptian, and we'll be getting married in Egypt next August. We'll also be living there after the wedding. I have also already lived there for a while, so it's only really a destination wedding for my family/friends, not his. With that being said, Egypt is very far and my family isn't the travelling type (almost nobody has a passport), so I don't expect a lot of them to come. I do however have to invite everyone, and I have a big family; my dad has 12 siblings and I am close to all of my aunts/uncles/cousins. My question is, how do I go about invitations since I know many people won't be able to make it? I was thinking of inviting more friends under the assumption that most of my family won't come, but that seems risky because there is always that small chance that people will take this as their once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to Egypt, and all show up. My fiance will have a lot of family/friends there since they are almost all already in Egypt, so I also don't want to run the risk of having hardly anyone from my side if I invite only the number of guests that my budget allows for. 

 

 

[acw271011]

Have you considered sending a "save the date" first to see if you get any responses back or hints from people that might be considering attending? It isn't foolproof but might give you an idea if people are thinking about it. Egypt is a really long way so it might be a bit more difficult to get people to travel. Destination weddings usually factor about 50% of invitees that will attend but since yours is even further you might figure a smaller number. You could also try asking people in advance if it's something they might be considering. Otherwise I would just send invitations as you normally would and see what happens.

 

Good luck! That's a very interesting part of the world to be planning a wedding!

[MarMig]

I would send save the dates just to check who would go or not.

[bean527]

Thanks so much everyone! By the way @@MarMig you will get married on my birthday (hence my username 527)

 

I ended up sending save the dates and it's given me a pretty good indication of how many people will be coming from the US side. 

 

I plan on sending invites 3-4 months early as well so people have plenty of time to prepare. 

 

Regarding invites, I will be mailing them to all of our guests located in the U.S. However in Egypt, it's a bit complicated since nobody really uses snail mail for anything these days since the postal system is really really unreliable. What do you think of doing online invites for our Egyptian guests even though we will use paper ones for the American ones? We could do paper ones for my fiance's relatives, and the people he will be able to physically give the invites to, but the rest it might be difficult for him to organize a way to give them all physically since he isn't even in Egypt at the moment, and I wouldn't want to put the pressure on his parents to hand them all out. Would it be rude/tacky to give paper to some and online to others? My fiance says it wouldn't be considered that way in Egypt, but he's a guy and guys don't usually know this stuff anyway lol ! 

Edited March 12, 2016 by bean527

[LenoraMcClure]

My friend also had a destination wedding in South Florida, at Boca Raton , but with the wedding dress, venue and everything, the expenses went out of her budget, but thanks to the affordable catering in Boca Raton, she didn't have to spend any extra on food. Due to all these reasons she limited her guest list to up to 100 people.

[AdamnJenn17]

invite them anyway and give them the option - you may be pleasantly surprise if you are so close with them