Tackling Your Guest List

One of the first questions your invitation designer will ask you is, “How many invitations are you ordering?” Thus begins the flurry of guest-list questions. Who chooses the guests? How many does each side get to choose? Why are we inviting this guest? How many guests are we inviting? How do we organize the guest list? The guest list task can be one of the most debated in the entire wedding process. The following techniques in diplomacy and democracy will help you get your guest list balanced and ultimately, finalized.

Put a cap on the guest count. Your venue may only allow a certain number of people at your event. If your venue allows a large group of people, but you want a more intimate wedding, consult with the venue or your event coordinator about what numbers will achieve that feeling.

Divide democratically. In the last few decades, the couple that is marrying has increasingly invited more of their own friends, as opposed to the parents of the bride solely inviting the majority of the guests. Today, the most popular way of dividing the guest list is more democratic, by percentage. The first level of the list should be family. From the remaining available guest count, the bride and groom together invite 50% of the guests. The parents of the bride and groom invite 25% each. Even if the bride’s parents are paying for the wedding, the even percentages can help you avoid any feelings of inequality. If one person feels differently about the equal percentages, take time to listen to their feelings and reach a consensus decision with the group.

Choose wisely. As you add each name to your guest list, take a moment to think about the person and why it is important to you to have them at your wedding. There are lots of fringe reasons that you may think of inviting someone. Perhaps, they invited you to their wedding, they are your boss, or work friend. Decide if these guests are priorities for you. In large weddings, guests are invited for a wide variety of reasons. In a small wedding, couples are often limited to only inviting guests that you absolutely want to have at your wedding for the sheer pleasure of having them share in your special day.

Make sure that you each review the final list. If there are conflicts in who is invited, deal with them quickly. Ask each person contributing to the list not to verbally invite someone or discuss the wedding with anyone until everyone has agreed on the final list. No matter the size of your list, do not invite someone you do not want to have at your wedding – for any reason, even if you think they won’t come. This is important because weddings are emotional and you want positive people around you.

Creating and organizing your guest list is important and makes it easy to prioritize and maintain. Staying organized will also help you order the rest of your paper products. Begin by organizing the list into columns of information. You can include suffixes, first names, last name, address, number in party invited, who invited the guest, date invite sent, response card received, number in party attending and food selected. Excel is an excellent program as ait can add numbers for you to determine how many place and table cards you need, program, menus, etc. Start early to ensure that you h ave time to double-check addresses and spellings. Be sure to have each person who invited guests review the final guest list and approve before sending it to your calligrapher.