Wedding Tips: Coming Up with a Guest List

When you consider about the amount of people you know in your life, you begin to realize, "that's a lot of people!". And something about weddings brings people out of the wood work hoping to receive an invite. If you and your partner come from large families, and/or have an extensive amount of friends who you feel close to, you may find yourself with a 200+ guest list -- more power to ya! But sometimes there are those folks who it's ok to simply not invite. Still once you sit down to write out a guest list, you realize some people may actually get upset if not invited to your special day, which can make this task more stressful than it needs to be. Setting guidelines for who makes the cut can go a long way to reducing tension.

Right from the get-go, B and I decided we wanted a small wedding. And while it has grown larger than planned, coming up with our guest list was pretty quick and easy. We each sat down and wrote out who we absolutely wanted to have at our wedding, from both sides. Then we compared lists. 99% of our guests were the same, but there were people I hadn't thought about on his side, and people he didn't know I wanted to include on mine.

By no means did this suggest that we were then done with our list. As I mentioned, it's now grown to be larger than anticipated. How did this happen? Well, as soon as we were done with our lists, we emailed them to our moms. In each email we wrote something along the lines of "this is whom we're planning on inviting. You are more than welcome to invite whomever you want, but just know you will be financially responsible for them." This may seem a little harsh, but B and I are paying for our wedding, and money is limited. Also, we don't feel the need to invite people we haven't seen since we were kids and have had little to no contact with since, which sometimes can be where the invite list gets out of hand.

A wedding can be a very happy event for families, and the closer you are to the couple getting married the thrilled (hopefully) you feel; therefore, I can understand parents wanting to invite their cousins, friends and co-workers so they can also celebrate with people they're close to outside of family. But as I mentioned a few wedding posts back, the day is about you and your partner. If you don't know them or feel comfortable having certain people attend your wedding, then why should they be included on the guest list?

This question becomes more complicated if you and your partner are not paying for the wedding, or are getting a lot of financial help. Whoever is paying, has control. Hopefully, this is a good thing and no one takes advantage of anyone else. Regardless of who's paying or who wants whom invited, here is a little diagram I found to help decide whom to invite and whom you can cut:

I found this on Pinterest, which brought me to Planet Based Bride.