You invite the people you want to be there. That applies to both you and your soon to be spouse. It also applies to your parents if they’re paying (and sometimes even if they’re not). It’s also a great excuse to see people that you haven’t seen for a long long time.

It’s also extremely normal to invite family.

Now double the number because most of those people will bring a plus one, and add 20% cause that’s children that will come (unless you say no to kids which is becoming more popular).

Great, now your list of 20-30 people is over a hundred.

Of course you can have smaller weddings, but you will have to explain a lot to a lot of people, including family.

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To give an example, I invited my brother, my two sisters, my parents, and my grandparents to my wedding. I also invited some coworkers and friends, I think like 6-10 I can’t remember.

My wife had even fewer friends to invite. About the same size family. But her parents wanted to invite several people we had never ever met before.

We had 140 people. The numbers sound small up until the minute you start writing invites. Then you realize just how many people “have to come”.

100 is pretty easy to get to. I have 60 people on one side of my family alone. But for an average person, let's do a count. You've got say 8 immediate family members, including their partners. Your partner does too. Your dad's side has 10 people you want to invite. That's only two families of 5, so that's a low estimate for a lot of people. Your mom's side has two families of 5 you want to invite. Now your partner has the same. Lets keep it small and invite only 10 of your friends, so 20 with their partners. Your partner wants 10 friends as well. You are now at 96 people.

That's your immediate families, 10 relatives from each side, and 10 friends for you and 10 friends for your partner only.

My bf knows a ridiculous number of people. But he's a pretty outgoing and super friendly guy who loves to party. 🤷‍♂️

At least in my case, family. My family is really big and loves parties, his family is really big and loves parties. That quickly becomes a 250-300 person guest list.

Say you get married young, early 20s, you may have less accumulated friends.

By the time you are early 30s you will have probably accumulated more.

Friends from uni / college, work places, hobbies etc.

How many of these people invited you to their weddings? Usually fair that you reciprocate.

That's how you end up with long guest lists.

I had a coworker whose father was one of the owners of the company. Invited the whole office + their spouses, plus both extended families (and these were Catholic families, so big families), as well as a few coworkers from other offices. Flew in bishop to perform the ceremony, too. Really shelled put for that.

💰+vanity+tertiary characters.

The sliding scales of inviting all the people you want to have there and avoiding people getting pissed off if they don't get an invite (or similar political reasons) are only limited by the financial means available.

100 is a relatively easy target to reach for most people. Family and friends and their +1's and children gets you there pretty quick.

I got lucky in a sense: planned for 50, number kept ballooning, but then oh no, covid restrictions, we get exactly 12 people in the room! Goodbye 3rd cousin by marriage who’d be all pissy if they weren’t invited.

The moms know a lot of people who they want to invite, and sometimes the aunts as well... The size of your wedding doesn't make you a loser or not, ofc, and if it had been up to my wife (to a certain extent, ofc, she's also a girly girl who wants what she wants, lol) we might've just planned a 20-30 people small and cheap get-together but who can deny the MIL's requests. 🤷

it's about bragging and showing off.