Who should I invite? How many people should we invite? These are things to think about when you are building your guest list for your special day. Once of the most stressful steps in planning your wedding can be putting together the guest list. Here are a few steps to make the planning process a little bit easier on everyone.
1.) Who will be paying? You should take into consideration which party is paying for the reception, to be fair. Whoever is paying for reception should ultimately have the final say in the number of guest. If you and your “soon to be” are paying for the wedding you may want to talk to each of your parents and see if they can cut down their list to what you consider reasonable. If one of the parents are paying you may want to speak with them about who they think is necessary to have there. If both of the parents are paying then it is more of a compromise. Once you have figured out who is paying for what and you have figured out the budget, the list should be a little easier.
2.) What is your dream list? Make the list of your dreams, as if money was no object. Have each member that is involved in the wedding planning make their list of people they wish to invite. This would include the parents of each side, the “soon to be”, and yourself. You would cover your entire family and the “soon to be” would cover their side. I would recommend doing these in a program such as excel, or word document, it will only make life easy later on.
3.) Combine the List and Talk it Over: Take each list and combine them together. Try not to panic, as the list may look large and very overwhelming, but relax it will go down. To be sure you are comfortable with who is invited, take a minute and reviews everyone’s list. You may also want to consider the “plus ones,” and only invite those who have been in a long term relationship. As terrible as this may sound, make an A and B column of those who are invited and of those who are not. You could also consider using a three column method. Column A would be those that are absolutely invited to the wedding, column B would be those who are probably invited and column C would be for those that would be nice to invite if you could. This will give you flexibility to move people back and fourth as the list gets narrowed down.
4.) Weed Through the List: This part can be very stressful, but it is necessary. This is where you start narrowing down your list if you have a specific number or budget in mind. Start thinking about those you don’t really need to be invited… perhaps people that you haven’t seen in years. Is it necessary that they be invited to the wedding? Some people may not be the best fit for your special day.
5.) Take a Deep Breath and Relax: This part may seem very stressful but it is needed. Do not stress over those who you could not invite. They will understand. If you feel that you need to explain to them, just say it wasn’t in your budget and over time people won’t be hurt. Just be sure that everyone communicates with each other. This can become a touchy topic but with communication and making sure that every one is in the loop, it can go much more smoothly.