Guest list

So...i have my mom making my guest list for my side of the family...my FH will cover the guest list for his side and confirm it with his dad.....but what about friends?
I pretty much just went through facebook and made a super quick tentative list....yea that was 95 people lol. I am also not sure if i'm doing +guest or not....95 was WITHOUT a plus guest, unless its a husband/wife.

I know i'm having a big wedding...and i rather there more on the list than forget someone....but how did everyone go about making their LIST.
thanks!

Well since my parents are paying, they pretty much got to invite whoever they wanted. So they made a list of their friends and our family. FMIL made a list of her family and friends that she would like there...I thought it would be like 20 but its 6!

Then FH and I went through our friends and invited our closest friends with their husbands and wives. Anyone who we haven't talked to in over a year was not invited. People who weren't seriously dating or engaged were not invited with a guest. We had a max we wanted to stick to and we did!

Were paying, so we can invite whoever we want. We also know that we have a ton of friends, and not like people we havent talked to in a year...we also have family of friends (we are totally inviting the parents of at least 5 people since they were very important in our lives).
I guessed that our guest list was between 200-300, now its ooking like 300-400....i rather invite more than less...cause i reallydont wanna forget anyone!

well, at 1st FH gave me his list which was 226 people and I wasnt on it! This list included people he went to HS with and hadnt spoken to since...entire families etc.

I went through and added our friends, then all the important family and friends on both sides. My list was 146 people.

Then we told our families that we had the lists and that anyone extra they'd have to pay for. Honestly, anyone else would be people I didn't know...like his Mom's random friends from the salon, cousins from panama etc.

My Mom's list is pretty complete.

FH has some people i did forget so I'm hoping to stay under 175. Even so, most extra people would be paid for by FMIL. We're very firm on this.

I originally wanted a BIG wedding inviting everyone I ever met.. then i realized how much that would cost LOL

FH and I made a list of the absolute *most* important people to us and thats all were inviting.. i think its like 140 people

we basically made an A and B list (i know it sounds awful!)

BUT, we are paying ourselves soooo yea lol

we wrote down the ppl that absolutely, 100%, no questions asked HAD HAD HAD to be invited as our A's...

then we wrote everyone we WANTED there...so that was our B's...we knew how many ppl we wanted to have so we kind of went from there. we looked at our B's and had to decide, 'does this person reallyyyy have to be there?' 'would this person invite me to HIS wedding?' 'when is the last time i spoke to this person?' lol it made it MUCHHHH easier~!

HTH :)

we did family lists first (his side and my side) then for the rests of the guests we divided them into A B C, those who were ABSOLUTELY invited were A, those who were on the cusp were C....