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Do I have to invite someone who invited me to their wedding?

No. An invitation you accepted is a thank-you, not a contract, and nobody is keeping a ledger of weddings owed. What you do owe every friend on the list is the same test, applied once and in one sitting: have you had an actual conversation in the last twelve months, were you at their wedding, and would you go for a drink with them on an ordinary Tuesday? Three yes answers is Tier A, two is Tier B, one is Tier C, none is not inviting — which means the invitation they once sent you can never be more than a third of the reason they get one back. Below are 16 scored lists and scripts, split between the friends who invited you and the friends who quietly drifted away, plus a builder that flags a friend group you have half invited.

Build my guest list →Browse the scored lists
The invitation you already accepted

Six reciprocity outcomes, and what each one is actually worth

Every row below starts from the same fact — they invited you to theirs — and ends somewhere different, because the invitation is never the deciding input. Find the row you are in and take the tier it gives you.

1

You went to their wedding and you still speak most months

Invite them — they were always going to score. This row does not need reciprocity to resolve. They pass the conversation question and the drink question on their own, which is two yeses before the wedding is counted at all. Tier A or B depending on the third answer, and the invitation they sent you is a coincidence rather than a cause.

2

You went to their wedding and you have not spoken since

Tier C — invited only if Tier C fits the room. One yes out of three. That is a real connection and a genuinely warm memory, and it is still the weakest claim on a seat that anyone on your list has. Put them in C, invite the whole of C if the number allows, and cut the whole of C if it does not. What you must not do is let this household jump a friend you actually see.

3

They invited you and you did not go

No obligation at all — score them cold. An invitation you declined created nothing. You did not take a seat, eat a dinner or cost them anything, so run the three questions as though the wedding had never happened. Most of the time the answer is the same as it would have been anyway.

4

Their wedding was 200 people and yours is 120

Say the number — size is a complete answer. A couple who filled a ballroom does not expect the same list back from a room that seats 120, and the sentence that ends the conversation is arithmetic rather than feelings: "we're at 120 and both families alone came to nearly that." Nobody argues with a room. Plenty of people argue with "we just didn't feel close enough."

5

They sent a gift, or they have already mentioned yours

Thank them properly, and do not seat them for it. A gift is a gift. It is not a deposit on a chair, and treating it as one is how couples end up with twenty people at the reception they have not spoken to since 2021. Write the thank-you the week it arrives, and keep the scoring pass exactly where it was.

6

They asked you to be in their wedding party

Tier A, whatever the score says. This is the one override on the whole page. Standing up at somebody's wedding is a different order of thing from attending it, and a friendship that has cooled since does not undo it. Put them in A, with their partner, and move on — the exception is small enough to state and rare enough not to reopen the rest of the list.

Every one of those rows ends in a tier, and a tier only means something once there is a number to hold it against. The number of invitations that fills a given room is worked out on the wedding attendance rate page, and its answer is exactly the capacity the builder below takes.

The mechanic

🎯 The three-question pass

Do not sit down to pick friends. Sit down to answer three questions about every friend, in one sitting, and let the answers do the picking — it takes about twenty minutes for a normal list and it removes the part where you talk yourself into somebody at midnight. Each card below is one household scored, written the way the builder holds it.

Example 01

THE FRIENDS PASS — three questions, one sitting 1 · Have you had an actual conversation in the last 12 months? (A like is not a conversation. A group chat you both read is not a conversation.) 2 · Were you at their wedding, or invited to it? 3 · If they were in town on an ordinary Tuesday, would you go for a drink? 3 yes → Tier A · 2 yes → Tier B · 1 yes → Tier C · 0 yes → not inviting Never married, so question 2 does not exist? Score out of two: 2 → A · 1 → B · 0 → not inviting Answer for the household, not the person. Answer before you open their profile — the first answer is the true one.

The rubricPersonalize
Example 02

PRIYA & SAM RAMAN — 3 of 3 Spoken in the last 12 months? Yes, most weeks. At their wedding? Yes. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? Yes, and you would stay for a second. → Tier A · 1 household · 2 seats · Circle: close friends — Tier A is not a compliment, it is a constraint: if this tier alone does not fit the room, the problem is the room and not the list.

3 of 3 → APersonalize
Example 03

TESS OKAFOR — 2 of 3 Spoken in the last 12 months? Yes, twice, both times properly. At her wedding? Yes. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? Honestly, no — you would say yes to dinner in six months, not to a Tuesday. → Tier B · 1 household · 1 seat · Circle: college friends — Two yeses is the shape of most real friendships past thirty. Tier B is "we want you there", not "we speak every week", and it is the tier that decides whether the list fits.

2 of 3 → BPersonalize
Example 04

JONAH BELL — 1 of 2 (never married, so question 2 does not exist) Spoken in the last 12 months? No. Eighteen months, maybe two years. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? Yes. Immediately, without thinking about it. → Tier B · 1 household · 2 seats (partner of four years) · Circle: college friends — This is the question that rescues drifted friends, and it is why the pass has three questions rather than one. Time apart is not the same as a friendship being over, and the drink question is the only one that can tell the difference.

The drink questionPersonalize
Example 05

ANA DUARTE — 0 of 2 Spoken in the last 12 months? No. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? No — and the honest reason is that you would both find it awkward. → Not inviting · Kept on the sheet, left out of the export — Zero out of anything is the easiest row on the list and the one people avoid writing down. Write it down. A name recorded as "not inviting" stops the same conversation happening four more times, and it cannot be messaged by accident.

0 of 2 → outPersonalize
Example 06

THE COLLEGE GROUP — five households, scored in one pass Jonah Bell · no / — / yes → 1 of 2 → B Tess Okafor · yes / yes / no → 2 of 3 → B Beck Turner · yes / yes / yes → 3 of 3 → A Iris Lang · no / yes / no → 1 of 3 → C Ana Duarte · no / — / no → 0 of 2 → not inviting Then the layer check, because this circle is a group and not five strangers: · Live group chat, still used → the split is public. Move the whole group to one tier: all five at B, 5 invitations, 8 seats. · No chat, no annual thing, they only know each other through you → individual scores stand. 4 invitations, 7 seats, and nobody compares notes.

Whole groupPersonalize

You will type this list at least three times

Once while you are scoring it, once when the invitations go out, and once when you chase everyone who never replied. Score it here, download the file, and every version after this one is a copy rather than a retype.

Open the builder →
Obligation in

💌 They invited you. What that is actually worth.

Half of this page's traffic arrives holding one specific memory: a wedding you went to, a couple you have barely seen since, and a nagging sense of a debt. These five work that case through to a decision and give you the sentences for it.

Example 07

WILL & JO AMARI — 1 of 3, and the one yes is the wedding Spoken in the last 12 months? No. At their wedding? Yes — you were there, you danced, it was lovely. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? No. → Tier C · 1 household · 2 seats · Circle: people who invited us — This is the reciprocity case in its purest form, and the score is the answer: an invitation you accepted is worth exactly one third of a decision. Invite the whole of Tier C or cut the whole of Tier C. Do not invite this household ahead of a friend who scored two.

Reciprocity onlyPersonalize
Example 08

THE INVITATION YOU DECLINED They invited you · You did not go · Circle: people who invited us Run the three questions as though the wedding had never happened: Spoken in the last 12 months? No. At their wedding? No — invited, but you were not there. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? No. → 0 of 3 → not inviting — You did not take a seat, a dinner or a place setting, so nothing was spent on you. Where the score comes out differently — you declined for a reason and still speak weekly — that difference shows up in question one, which is where it belongs.

You didn't goPersonalize
Example 09

THE SIZE ANSWER — 200 guests then, 120 now Their wedding: about 200 people, two families, a ballroom. Yours: 120, which both families alone nearly fill. Friends who invited us and scored 1 of 3: 6 households, 11 seats. Seats available after family and Tier A and B friends: 4. → Whole circle to Tier C, whole circle out. One decision, six households, nobody singled out. — Six individual apologies is six conversations. One boundary is one sentence you can say six times without it ever sounding like a ranking.

The room decidesPersonalize
Example 10

"We had such a good time at yours — which is exactly why I wanted to tell you this myself rather than let you notice it. We're at 120 and our two families alone came to nearly that, so we ended up with almost no room for friends outside the handful we see every week. I'm sorry. It isn't a comment on you two at all, and I'd love to get dinner in the spring."

Told directlyPersonalize
Example 11

"That's so kind of you and completely unnecessary — thank you, genuinely. And I want to be straight with you before anything arrives in the mail: we're doing something small, and the list ended up being family plus about ten friends. You're not on it, and I hate that, but I'd rather you heard it from me in October than work it out in February." — For the friend who has sent a gift, mentioned yours, or started sentences with "when we come to yours". A gift is thanked. It is never a deposit on a chair.

Gift, not a depositPersonalize
Drift out

🕰️ The friends you have not spoken to in years

The other half of this page is the reverse problem: people who were unquestionably your friends, who are still in your phone, and who you last spoke to in a year you would have to check. The pass handles them fine — what needs deciding is how far down the list it runs, and what you say to the ones it removes.

Example 12

THE SOCIAL-MEDIA SWEEP Start: 340 people you would recognize online. Question one only — an actual conversation in the last 12 months? → 41 households survive. Run questions two and three on those 41. Nothing else needs opening, scrolling or agonizing over. — The 299 were never candidates; they were contacts. Following someone's life is not the same as being in it, and a wedding list built from a follower count is a list of strangers with good manners.

Followers ≠ friendsPersonalize
Example 13

THE ONE YOU NEVER SEE AND WOULD MISS Spoken in the last 12 months? No. At their wedding? Yes, 2019. Drink on an ordinary Tuesday? Yes — you would clear the evening for it. → 2 of 3 → Tier B · 1 household · 2 seats · Circle: childhood friends — Distance is not drift. A friendship that survives eighteen months of nothing and picks up mid-sentence is a real one, and the pass is built to keep it: two of the three questions are about the friendship rather than the frequency.

Distance, not driftPersonalize
Example 14

THE HOMETOWN GROUP — where the layer rule bites Six households from school. One group chat, still active, birthdays and football. Scores: two A, one B, two C, one not inviting. ⚠ Inviting three of six in a live group chat is public information by the following weekend. → Round the group to one tier. All six at B: 6 invitations, 10 seats. Or none of the six, and one sentence that covers all of them. — A group that still talks is a layer, and a layer is invited whole or cut whole. A group that only ever existed through you is six separate people, and the split will genuinely never be noticed.

Live group chatPersonalize
Example 15

"I've been thinking about you — partly because we're getting married in June and I've spent a week with a spreadsheet. We've ended up with something small and it's mostly family, so I'm not going to be able to invite you, and I didn't want that to be how you found out. You mattered a great deal to me for a long time and that hasn't changed. Can I buy you a coffee when I'm home in the spring?"

Old friend, before the postPersonalize
Example 16

"You're right, she isn't — and I'd rather tell you than have you guess. We had room for about ten friends outside the people we see every week, and that was the line. It isn't a falling-out and there's no story behind it. I'd honestly rather you didn't relay this; if she asks me, I'll tell her the same thing I've just told you." — For the mutual friend who notices first. Say it once, to the person who asked, and never to the group chat.

Mutual friend asksPersonalize
Person, layer, or list?

A friend is a person. A friend group is a layer.

This is the page where the distinction is sharpest in the whole cluster. A cousin is never really an individual decision — cut one and you have cut a layer, which is why the family pages move whole circles at a time. A friend usually is an individual decision, made once, that nobody else audits. The exception is a friend group that still shares a live group chat, and it is the exception that catches people out.

1

They invited us to theirs, so we have to invite them

One person · One named individual. Applied as a layer it quietly drags in every wedding either of you has ever attended — and that is thirty households nobody chose.

2

We are not inviting Ana

One person · One named individual. Dressed up as a rule about college friends it cuts four people you wanted there, and everyone in the group works out which decision it really was.

3

If one of the college group is in, they are all in

A whole layer · Every household in the circle. Applied to one person it becomes a favor, and a group with one active chat finds out about the favor the same evening.

4

Anyone we have not spoken to in a year comes off

The whole list · The list as a whole. Enforced friend by friend it becomes an argument about exceptions; enforced across the list in one sitting it is a single decision that holds all the way to the invitations.

5

Our friends' partners are in if they live together or it is over a year

A whole layer · Every household in the circle. Varying the standard by friend turns a rule into a ranking, and the ranking is legible to everyone it was applied to.

6

We each get 20 of the 120 seats for our own friends

An allocation · Each contributor's bucket. Left unstated, every friend one of you adds late reads as a seat taken from the other — which is an argument about arithmetic conducted entirely in adjectives.

This page decides one household at a time; the layer version of the same question — cousins, aunts and uncles, whole branches of a family — is worked out on the extended family page. For the number that makes a tier mean something, the wedding attendance rate turns the seats you have into the invitations you can send, and its answer is the capacity the builder above takes. Whether a friend's partner gets a seat is settled by the plus-one rules, whether their children are on the list at all belongs with adults-only invitation wording, and if a whole tier of friends might come back once the replies are in, the timing lives on second-wave invitations. Once the names are settled, collecting their numbers is the next job — this builder never asks for one.

Keeping the pass honest

Four rules that stop the scoring drifting

The pass only works if it is run the same way for everybody. These four are what keep it from collapsing back into an evening of picking favorites.

1

Answer for the household, not the person

One score per invitation. Couples are one row, and "I like him and not her" is a conversation about the invitation, not about the score — settle it with the same partner standard you apply to every other friend on the list.

2

Answer before you open their profile

Thirty seconds of someone's photographs will convert a no into a maybe every single time. The first answer, given cold, is the accurate one; the second answer is recency dressed up as fondness.

3

Reciprocity is one third of a decision

Their invitation is one question out of three, deliberately. It can lift a household from nothing to Tier C, and on its own it can never do more than that — which is the whole answer to the question at the top of this page.

4

Run the entire friends circle in one sitting

A pass run over three weeks is three different moods with three different standards. Do the lot in one go, write the tiers down, and treat anything you want to change afterwards as a change to the rule rather than an exception to it.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong with the friends list

None of these is fatal and most couples make at least one. Each costs a conversation, a seat, or both — and every one of them is avoidable in the twenty minutes it takes to run the pass.

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Treating an old invitation as an invoice

The invite-back reflex is the single most expensive habit on this page: eight households, sixteen seats, and not one of them a person you would call. Score them like anyone else and let most of them land in C where they belong.

✕

Inviting someone because they would be offended

Fear is not a scoring question. A seat given to avoid a conversation is a seat resented on the day and paid for twice — once at the deposit and once in the photographs.

✕

Splitting a group that still has a live chat

Half a friend group is the friends version of half a family layer, and it is discovered faster because the evidence is in a chat everybody can scroll. Round the group up or round it down, but do not send four invitations to a group of six.

✕

Inviting people you are quietly hoping will decline

They will not, or the ones you wanted to come will. Either way the seat is spent on a hope rather than a decision, and hopes do not fit in a room with a fixed number of chairs.

✕

Saying "we ran out of room" when you have not

It is the kindest-sounding sentence available and it invites negotiation, because room is a thing that can change. Name the boundary you actually drew — family plus the friends we see every week — and there is nothing to argue with.

✕

Leaving the friends list unwritten until the invitations

A list of friends that exists only as a conversation cannot be checked against a room, cannot be checked for a half-invited group, and has to be rebuilt from memory on the evening you address everything.

Free, and it never leaves your browser

Score them on the page, tag them in the tool

The list below opens with two friend groups and one couple who invited you to theirs, already tiered the way the cards above score them. Run the three questions in your head, set each household's tier, and watch the consistency checker flag a friend group you have half invited. Everything happens in this tab — nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere, and there is no saved draft, which is exactly why you download the file before you close it.

Wedding guest list templateFree · no sign-up · runs entirely in your browser

Two friend groups and a couple who invited you to theirs — the reciprocity call, sitting next to the layer call.

This is how many people you can invite, not how many will come — turning one into the other is what the attendance-rate page does: to seat 100, invite 118 to 128.

5 circles are on this list. A circle is what the consistency check reads.

15

15 people in 8 householdsEveryone in tiers A, B and C is counted here; 1 person is in the not-inviting pile and stays out of the file. Set a capacity to see where the line falls.

First nameLast nameHouseholdCircleTierPlus ones
Two people with the same household label are one invitation.

Everything here runs in your browser. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere — there is no account, no saved list and no cookie holding your guests (we count anonymous, bucketed usage of the tool itself, never a name, a number or a list size). That also means closing this tab loses the list, which is why the button says download.

Where the line falls

  • ATier A — no wedding without them10 in this tier · 5 households · 10 with everything above it10
  • BTier B — you want them there3 in this tier · 2 households · 13 with everything above it3
  • CTier C — only if there is room2 in this tier · 1 households · 15 with everything above it2
  • Not invitingNot inviting1 in this tier · 1 households · left out of the export1
  • 2 of 3 college friends are on the list and 1 are not. Invite the layer or cut the layer — a split one is visible to everybody in it.

Downloads a CSV of everyone still on the list — tiers A, B and C, minus any tier you have switched off above. The not-inviting pile stays on this page.

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Keep exploring

More on deciding who to invite

Who to invite to your weddingThe whole decision, circle by circle→Inviting coworkersThe test that keeps a team from being split→Estranged familyA named decision, made once and recorded→Telling someone they're not invitedWhat to say, when to say it, and to whom→Who to invite to a small weddingWhere the line falls at 20, 50 and 75→Your friends' partnersOne standard, applied to every friend on the list→
Good to know

Friends and reciprocity questions

Do I have to invite someone who invited me to their wedding?

No. An invitation you accepted is a thank-you, not a contract, and there is no etiquette rule anywhere that says a wedding must be repaid with a wedding. Score them the way you score every other friend — spoken in the last year, at their wedding, would you get a drink with them — and if the only yes is the wedding itself, they belong in your lowest tier and are invited only if that tier fits the room.

Do I have to invite someone who gave me a wedding gift?

No. A gift is thanked, promptly and in writing, and that discharges it completely. Treating gifts as deposits on chairs is how couples end up seating people they have not spoken to in years while a friend they see every week gets cut for space.

Should I invite friends I have not spoken to in years?

Only if you would actually see them. The test that separates a lapsed friendship from a finished one is simple: if they were in town on an ordinary Tuesday, would you go for a drink? A genuine yes means the friendship survived the gap and they belong on the list. A hesitation means you are inviting a memory, and memories do not need catering.

How do I decide which friends to invite to my wedding?

Ask three yes/no questions about each household in one sitting: have you had a real conversation in the last twelve months, were you at their wedding or invited to it, and would you get a drink with them on an ordinary Tuesday. Three yeses is your top tier, two is the middle, one is the tier that comes off first if the numbers do not work, and none means you are not inviting them. Answer for the household, and answer before you go looking at their photographs.

Can I invite some of my friend group and not others?

It depends entirely on whether the group still exists as a group. If they share a live chat or meet without you, a partial invitation is public information within a weekend, so move the whole group into one tier — all of them or none. If they only ever knew each other through you, they are separate decisions and the split will genuinely never be noticed.

Is it rude not to invite friends I only know through social media?

No, and it is not really a decision either — following someone is not the same as knowing them. Run the first question over your whole contact list and only the people you have actually spoken to in the last year survive to be scored at all. Nobody who has liked your posts for three years is expecting an envelope.

What do I say to a friend who is not invited?

Tell them yourself, before anything arrives in the mail, and name the boundary rather than the person: "we ended up with family plus about ten friends, and that was the line." Say it once, to them, and do not repeat it in a group chat. Do not offer a maybe, and do not blame the room unless the room is genuinely the reason — a boundary cannot be negotiated, but a shortage of space always can be.

A list is names on a page.
Until you send it, that is all it is.

Build the list here, download it, and import the file into Text My Wedding — the same names then carry the invitation, the RSVP and every reminder, without anybody retyping them.

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