{The Guest List}
Who should be on the guest list? Let’s go in order of importance and they generally fall into three categories.
- Immediate family (parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents)
- Extended family (uncles, aunts, cousins) Oh, but this one category could get very interesting. Please, please, please invite those that fall into this circle only if you have a relationship with them that you value and respect. If you haven’t seen those aunts and uncles, even cousins, in years, then please, save yourself some heartache and money and don’t invite them. This may sound harsh, but more often than not, the stress that I have seen when planning a wedding comes down to someone saying, “if we hadn’t invited ALL these people we don’t know very well or worse, at all, we wouldn’t have spent so much money” or have to worry about who sits where, etc.
- Friends (this includes co-workers, neighbors, even business associates that you consider friends). This is the section of the guest list that gets the most out of control. Friends is also the broad category to invite everyone else which includes your friends, your parents friends and plus ones.
Let me reiterate the fact about inviting people to your wedding that you hardly know. Your parents, both sets, may wish to invite co-workers or friends that they have a relationship with but you don’t. Please, take the time to have a candid, but calm discussion about this. And while some parents may say, “well, we’re paying for this, so we get to invite whomever we want”, it’s just not a comfortable situation. It is the first opportunity for compromise, but it won’t be the last mind you. And yes, this is one of the more ugly and stressful moments of wedding planning. Because it all eventually comes around to the budget. Some of the most expensive parts of the budget are based on the number of guests – your invitations, your venue size, centerpieces, rentals, food and cake, wait staff, the list goes on. For me, personally, that guest list which was created at the time we were getting ready to order invites, became a rather big issue. An issue that resulted in some drama and was not resolved in a manner which either my hubby or I were satisfied. It resulted in some budget woes and concerns, and ultimately with people that were at our wedding that we did not know. Awkward. So let’s get the bad and the ugly out of the way first and move on to the fun stuff!
