Creating Our Wedding Guest List – Be Organized and Set Aside Guidelines For Yourself
I wanted the guest list to be completed early on, because I knew it would affect ordering favors, invitations, and thank-you cards. I gave my mother and Brian’s mother both the order: Come up with a detailed guest list as soon as humanly possible.
For the most part, they worried about which family members to invite. I have a lot of extended relatives that I have never met before, and I was lucky to have my mom making that part of the guest list, because she knew who would need a definite invite and who we could skip without hard feelings.
Brian and I also worked on our own lists, deciding which of our friends we wanted to invite. When the lists were all completed, we counted them up. We had about 350 people on our wedding guest list, but I knew from reading multiple wedding articles and books that we could count on about one third of those people to RSVP with “no”.
Making an organized wedding guest list is very important. I used the guest list management tool on theknot.com. It had a chart with everything imaginable.
When I typed in a guest’s name, I could put how many in their party were invited, their RSVP response, and how many in their party were attending. I could also track gifts that guests had sent, see who had been sent invitations, and manage a seating chart for the reception.
I could even put all the addresses in and print labels right from the site. We ended up just using Microsoft Word to print our invitation labels. We did not assign seating at the reception – but all of the features of the website excited me anyway.
It’s important to feel surrounded by loved ones on your wedding day, so there were some individuals that were purposely left out of the wedding invitation guest list. For instance, anyone who had attempted to interfere with our relationship was not invited out of respect for each other. With other couples, inviting past significant others may be perfectly reasonable. It’s important to discuss your feelings with your fiancé in order to figure out who makes the cut and who does not.
We also had to decide not to invite many members of our church family. This was a little more difficult, since I grew up in the church we were married in. However, our budget would simply not allow us to invite several hundred guests. I have found in my wedding planning endeavors that many people are aware and respectful of this.
Be organized and set aside guidelines for yourself when it comes to inviting people to your wedding. Maybe that consists of deciding that if you haven’t spoken to that friend in three years, they don’t need an invite. Deciding ahead of time and then sticking to your ‘rules’ will help you avoid some headaches. Invite the people that matter the most to you, and then celebrate with them on your special day!
If you've enjoyed reading this post then please subscribe to our Full Text RSS Feed.
Related Posts
- Invitation Consultants
- Creating Our Unique Wedding Guest Book
- How e Wedding Invites Saved Us Money and Time
- Creating My Own Wedding Invitations in 3 Steps
- Making Our Own Wedding Invitations – Not All That Difficult And Time-Consuming
