wedding guest lists

Happy Wednesday!  Today I am continuing my posts about entertaining and weddings.  It seems that TONS of people have gotten engaged recently and I hope that this post helps with what can often be the most stressful part of wedding planning...compiling a guest list!

To make things a little easier, I have compiled a guide to creating your guest list and then making necessary adjustments for budget and venue restrictions.  While the process isn't easy, I hope this list will make it a little easier.

A few things to note about this process:

First, making a list of everyone (despite budget and venue restrictions) can seem like a waste of time.  Trust me when I say it is NOT a waste of time.  It is much better to list anyone and everyone you think you might even slightly want to invite to the wedding than to leave someone off the list entirely.  If you list everyone, your chances of overlooking someone important to you are significantly lower.

Second, when "assigning guests" to a contributor to the list, I found it helpful to give everyone a color.  For instance, when we made our wedding list, my guests were listed in green, Josh's guests in blue, my parents guests in red, and my future-in-laws guests in purple.  This was a quick way to sort through the list and see who had added each name to the list.

It is helpful to have a "number" column on any master list.  Remember that when you invite one person, the invitation often includes an "and guest."  This means, inviting one person actually results in a guest count of two people.  Also remember to account for a higher number for families if, for instance, you are inviting parents and their children.

Finally, a note about adjusting according to groupings.  This is the hardest part of any guest list creation...cutting people from the list.  In an ideal world no one would be cut from a wedding list, but in reality, venue and budget restraints apply.  So, to avoid awkward situations, it is best to cut in "groupings."  This simply means that you should cut people of similar relation to yourself and to each other.  For instance, rather than cutting one of your book club friends, an old college friend, and a second cousin, it is much better to just cut all of your second cousins.  While this may mean that you cut more people than you technically need to, it will be much easier to explain (and fewer feelings will be hurt) if you can say you didn't invite one of your second cousins but not another.

I hope this checklist helps.  Let me know if you have any other tips or techniques and best wishes to all you newly engaged brides!

xo,