How Many Wedding Invitations Do I Really Need to Order?

One of the first questions I ask a couple when they reach out to me to inquire about wedding invitations is: “How many households are you inviting?” This question trips up some people because so much of wedding planning and guest counts are based on individual head counts, but not household counts. In this blog post, I’m going to give you a stationers insight into figuring out how many households you’re inviting, who is considered to be part of a “household”, and how many extras you need (spoiler alert: you definitely want to order extras!). Make sure to read until the end to download the guest address template I send all my couples to keep track of guest count vs. household count!

Households vs. Individual Guest Count

When you are first building your guest list, you are probably most concerned with the guest count aka how many individual people you will be inviting. This is super important for early wedding planning tasks like finding a venue, getting a catering quote, and securing some rentals, as these vendors usually require the individual guest count. However, when it comes to wedding save the date cards and invitations, it’s the household count that matters.

Rule of Thumb

There’s no easy formula to determine how many households you have based on your guest count, although a good rule of thumb is your number of households is about 50-60% of your number of guests. However, a lot of factors go into calculating that exact number — are you inviting a lot of single people and couples, or are there large families in the mix? I’ve put together a template spreadsheet that can easily calculate your total guest count and your total household count, so you don’t end up order twice as many invitations!

Let’s look at an example

Let’s say you're inviting your Uncle Rob, Aunt Susan, and their two kids, Beth and Steven – that’s four people. However, assuming Beth and Steven are under 18, this is just one household. If you have even just a small handful of these larger households, you could drastically overestimate how many invitations you need to order if you relied only on individual guest count to determine your order number. 

What is considered a “household”?

Another question I get asked a lot is who exactly constitutes a household. A lot of times it’s straightforward, like parents and their young children, or a married couple, or a non-married couple that live together. Sometimes it’s a little more confusing. Here are some special scenarios that I’ve encountered over the years as a wedding stationer.

Special scenario 1: Adult children

Remember my example above of the household of Uncle Rob, Aunt Susan, Beth and Steven? Well, what happens if your cousins Beth and Steven are over 18 and still living at home? Maybe they’re in college and spend most of the year at school but summers at home; or maybe they already graduated but are living at home to save money. Whatever the case may be, if they are over 18, they are adults and should receive their own invitations. This is even more important if either Beth or Steven are in a relationship and their partner is invited. The envelope can get quite crowded when you suddenly have to add in partners and plus ones! Plus, it’s just proper etiquette for adult children to receive their own invitation, regardless of their living situation. 

Special scenario 2: Roommates/Housemates that are all invited

Unless the roommates/housemates are a couple, each adult (or couple) should receive their own invitation. These roommates presumably don’t plan their lives around each other so they shouldn’t have to respond as one household. If you have a situation where two of the people are in a relationship and the third is just a roommate, then two invitations should suffice (one for the couple and one for the individual roommate).

Special scenario 3: Couples that don’t live together

This one, I would say, is up to you and depends on your relationship to the couple. If you are close to just one person, send that person one invitation addressed to both people. If you are equally close to both people, this gets a little trickier. Some couples appreciate individual invitations while some would prefer their relationship to be acknowledged in the invitation by sending just one. If you have this situation (it’s rare but not completely out of the ordinary), I would personally reach out to the couple and ask what they prefer. 

What about extra invitations?

You may be tempted to save a little extra money and only order exactly how many invitations you need, but I would caution against that. You’ll likely want a keepsake (or two) to hold onto yourselves; a lot of photographers will take photos of the invitation suite as part of the details shots, so that’s another extra; as parents may want an extra pristine copy to hold onto, so let’s say two more. We’re up to about five extras right now and those are just for keepsake purposes. 

My recommendation is to order about 5-10 extras for keepsake purposes and in case you decide to add last minute guests closer to the wedding day. If you think you may add more guests (e.g. if you have a B list), make sure to account for those extras as well. And finally, if you are hand addressing or printing addresses at home, at the very least see if you can order extra envelopes to account for any addressing mistakes.

I hope you found this helpful in figuring out exactly how many wedding invitations you should be ordering! If you’re currently planning a wedding and want to make sure you don’t over order your invitations or save the dates, check out the handy spreadsheet I’ve created just for you!