Planning Pickle

Ladies and gentlemen, I am in a pickle.



(Photo via hot dog halloween costume. net)

To be fair, I am fully responsible for putting myself in said pickle.
When my we came up with the idea of having the reception at the current location, we were very excited about the prospects of a microbrewery as our reception hall. We talked with the owner saying we were expecting between 100-200 people and gave him our budget. Everything was very informal and a few days later my dad let me know that we had gotten the green light. Everything was rolling

Fast forward a couple of weeks, our guest list has ballooned well over 200 (close to 250 with +1s(which had been given to each and every unmarried adult(married coupples wer invited together naturally)) and save the dates have been sent out.

Fast forward a couple more weeks. I am speaking with the my contact at the venue starting to get into details and a detail I was not expecting pops up. They can hold 175 people. Ok, deep breathes.... this is not a crisis. Yet.

I looked at the guest list. While I would never dream about un-viting anyone, or not sending an invite to someone who got a save the date, there are many people who (99.99999% chance) will not be coming due to distance or timing or any number of other reasons. Many of these are also friends of our parents' friends or distant relatives I may have met once as a baby. So I highlighted those. Then to the plus ones. There were lots of single guests who knew lots of other guests... Their plus ones got chopped. It kind of felt like this:

(Photo Via Ketterman Photography)

So far, with the adjustments to my side only, we are down to a MAX of 220. Now I know I am not the best at math but I don't think 220=175. I know Mr. Aardvark has a lot of cousins (who have a lot of kids) that he doesn't think will be able to make it. There are also a few more +1s I could take out.  We will have to take a closer look tonight... Or think about renting a tent for the parking lot.

I do have some guilt about hoping people can't make it. I mean we are inviting them because we want our families and friends near us right!? However, as I stated above, neither Mr. Aardvark nor I are particularly close to many of the people on the "chances are they won't come" portion of the list (that's how they got there to begin with!)

Let this be a lesson to you.  Get a hard number from your venue before you send out save the dates! I am still very very excited about the venue, the food, and the atmosphere is AMAZING! We will work it out somehow, even if it means our reception has to be a block party!

Did you have any missteps in planning? Do you know how you will solve them?