Your Guest List – Easy as A,B,C
After you complete your budget, a guest list should be next on your wedding to do list. It’s important to have a general guest count before you choose your venue for a couple of reasons. First, you’ll want a venue that will be the right size for your number of guests. If you have your heart set on a romantic restaurant that seats eighty, you won’t be able to invite the 200 guests on your list. Second and conversely, it’s a lot easier to select the right size venue once you have an idea of how many guests you may want to invite.
Before you put pen to paper or keystroke to computer, you may also want to consult both sets of parents to see if they have any expectations of who should or shouldn’t be invited. I know many a guest list that has spiraled out of control after the bride and groom presented their guest list to their parents who subsequently invited ALL of their friends and relatives. Sometimes this is fine, especially if your parents are paying for the wedding and the budget allows. IF however, you are paying for the wedding yourself you may have to limit the number of guests beyond your own “A” list. As a rule of thumb, if not inviting someone is going to cause the outbreak of World War Three, I would suggest sending out the extra invitation.
Many guest lists include guests that you are almost certain will not attend. As a rule, I tell my clients to expect about fifteen percent of their guests to decline. For a destination wedding it can be as high as thirty percent or more. So it can be Okay to “pad” your guest list just a bit.
When you are ready to make your list I suggest using an excel spreadsheet on your computer. Type just one item into each column. For instance in column A on the spreadsheet, type whether the guest is on the A, B, or C list. In column B, type the guests first name. In column C type their last name. Having separate first and last name columns helps you sort your guests much more easily and will also help with assigning table seating later on. You may also want to add a column for titles, like Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr., etc. In the subsequent columns I would suggest putting the street address, city, state, zip code, phone number and email all in their own columns. You can fill in that information later on if you don’t have it on hand when you are making out your initial list.
List each guest individually, even the children. Again this will make tracking the number of guests a lot easier, especially if some parents are not bringing their children to the wedding but will have them attending the rehearsal dinner and/or brunch. Perhaps you would like to invite children, but only if there is room. If this is the case then the parents would have an A next to their name but the children might have a B or C next to their name.
They don’t call it the A list for nothing! First make your A list which includes those non-negotiable guests. This would be immediate family and the closest of your friends that you see or are in contact with regularly.
The B List would include more distant family and other friends, while the C list might include people that your fiance has never met, co-workers, or people whom you have not seen in the past couple of years. Just because you were invited to their wedding ten years ago does not obligate you to invite them to your wedding.
Finally, sort your guest list by Column A which will have an A, B or C in it. You can then see how many guests are on your A list, B list and C list. If you are really in a pinch you can also stage your invitations. Mail the A list guests their invitations twelve weeks out. Once you have some idea of who will or won’t attend you can mail out your B list and then if you still have room, your C list.
If you need further help planning your guest list or other wedding details please give me a call. I am happy to spend a few minutes with you or, if needed, you can set up an hourly consult with The Main Event.
Cheers!
Jill
303-570-6570
This article is part of The Main Event’s article series on How to plan your wedding! Stay tuned for next months post on Selecting a Venue.