Bride-to-Be Blogger Jennifer: Making the Guest List

It turns out that you can think a lot about the Big Day, but then when the time comes, have no idea where to start to actually plan it. Until we started looking through books and Web sites, seeking out the steps to planning a wedding, we were completely lost. Thankfully I have friends who’ve paved the path for me and offered some advice on what steps worked for them.

Step One: The Guest List
No one has anything positive to say about creating a guest list. Truthfully, I have two unreasonable wishes that fight against one another. I wish to both invite everyone and no one all at the same time. I want a small wedding, but I don’t want to leave anyone out. Since we can’t accomplish both, we are aiming for the middle-of-the-road, though the true width of that road is still being determined.

We decided to start making a joint friends list which included our unknowing yet hopefully agreeable bridal party. It seemed like a reasonable list but over the last few weeks, we keep bringing up people we “forgot” when we created the initial list. (Sorry, friends. It’s true.) Then we struggled with the “if we invite so-and-so, than we have to invite so-and-so.” This we discovered to be a dramatic spiral into a far too elaborate and large wedding. So we are trying to keep it simple. I have a couple of rules to help meet this goal.

Rule #1: If I haven’t spoken to/seen you in a long time you were left off the list. Online social networking doesn’t carry all the weight…sorry!

Rule #2: The budget factor. At the end of the day, our budget truly dictates who we can and can not accommodate.

We created our list and then asked our families to create theirs. We are looking at inviting about 135 people at this point and we are both fine with that. With this number, we can accommodate all, on the off-chance that everyone RSVPs yes and brings a guest.

Many people use back-up lists or B lists. We haven’t put one of these together, yet. What do you think?

Up next: Creative ways to approach your bridal party and the final countdown to picking a venue. There seems to be one at the top of our list…but can we get the date we want?

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