B-List Guests

Mrs. Butterfly, New York Age and Occupation in 06: 27, Bridezilla in training Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Making me happy by saying "yes dear" to everything related to wedding planning. Engagement Date: February 3, 2006 Wedding Date: November 18, 2006 Venue: Twenty-Four Fifth About Me: Our wedding will be small but fun. I want a whole range of music including cheesy 80's music! But we'll see how that works out��‚��

September 27th, 2006 @ 2:32 pm by Mrs. Butterfly

As much as I hate to use the phrase “B-List Guests,” I think it’s sometimes inevitable that we have them. It’s especially unavoidable if you have parents who want to send out invitations to certain guests just in case they want to come - mostly to be polite and to announce that I was getting married. I gave my mom 24 “seats” and only 10 are coming - maybe 9. So now my guest count is all off and I’m barely making my 85 minimum guarantee.

My problem is not so much that I have B-List guests, but that I only ordered 60 full invitations. I have extras of just the invitation layer, but I’m out of the backing layers and pocketfolds. Tonight after work, I will be at Kate’s Paperie looking for these items, or I will be stuck sending out the incomplete versions - just the invitations and the RSVP card with tissue paper.

Tip 1: Order much more invitations than you think you need.

Speaking of RSVP cards…

I feel bad about inviting the B-List people because my reply card says to respond by October 1, which is this Sunday. Any person would be able to figure out that they were on the B-List. I’m racking my brain to see if there is a tactful way to give these people their invitations while letting them know that they are “second-choice”. I can just imagine: “Hi, here are your invites. Sorry that they are late, but we didn’t think we would be inviting you.”

Had I known that I was going to end up with B-List guests, I would have had some reply cards printed with a later date.

Tip 2: If you expect to have a B-List, I would highly suggest getting two sets of reply cards, one set with a slightly later due date.

Are you having any B-List people at your wedding? If so, how did you end up inviting them?

12 Responses to “B-List Guests”

s says:

we aren’t but my coworker did and made up DIY rsvp cards to “match” the invites…at least the best possible that they could do

9/27/06 at 2:34 pm (reply)

miss violet says:

those are great tips. i’m hoping to have one list only..

9/27/06 at 2:46 pm (reply)

milka says:

This is not helpful to you at this point, but I sent out invites far enough in advance that 6 weeks before the wedding, I could have an idea of numbers and send out some “b-list” invites with the same RSVP date.

This is my thing: all this planning about your budget and how many chairs to rent and how many chair covers, favors, programs, slices of wedding cake, etc etc ALL DEPENDS ON HOW MANY GUESTS. You know? Wedding planning goes on for months and all the time, you’re making decision in the dark b/c you don’t know how many guests you’ll have. Number of guests is the most esssential piece of info and it’s the absolute LAST piece of info you get. It makes no sense.

So I sent out my invites earlier than Emily Post recommends (10 weeks). It also benefits guests to know to make arrangements if they are coming (and they can get cheaper plane tickets).

9/27/06 at 2:48 pm (reply)

dingbatkim says:

i had a b-list but didn’t end up inviting that many from the list. my FI just told them we hand delivered it to them since we never got around to mailing them out. don’t know if they bought it but they ended up not being able to come anyway! what a waste of an invitation! j/k.

9/27/06 at 2:50 pm (reply)

hm says:

we are not b-listing. i thought the guest list is already out of control, so i insisted that everyone cut all the “maybe.”

9/27/06 at 3:04 pm (reply)

kanipark says:

all my parents friends (60 in total) were part of our B-list… we sent all the invites at the same time

9/27/06 at 3:41 pm (reply)

tristan says:

We had the same problem with the rsvp date. But we actually told them we sent them all out late!

9/27/06 at 3:43 pm (reply)

kate says:

We’re not having a b-list, even though we have about 40 less people than expected, mostly because we don’t know anyone local to the wedding that hasn’t already been invited. If we were getting married where we currently live and had this problem, I would probably invite some coworkers last minute.

I think for those that you’re inviting now you should just be honest with them. You or your family can call them and say that originally you didn’t have space because there were so many people you were obligated to invite, but now since it turns out you’ll have extra space, you’d be so honored if these people would accept a last minute invitation. We did send our save the date late to some new friends and I used this strategy. Several of them said they appreciated my honesty and were excited to be invited.

One thing to keep in mind is the headcount deadline your caterers need - will it give these people at least a week to figure out if they can attend? And you enough time to make place cards if need be?

9/27/06 at 3:44 pm (reply)

D says:

I’m really rallying against having a B-list. Why? Because I know in almost every case that’s where my name appears. I’m willing to risk having too few attendees and paying the difference.

9/27/06 at 4:21 pm (reply)

10.

Joesee22 says:

I swear we had a G guest list! Actually we had 5 or 6 different rsvp dates because I was mailing out the invitations as I made them. So guests traveling from overseas had the earliest rsvp date since I was hoping that several wouldn’t be able to make it and so I could recycle the seats! No one seem to mine have a later rsvp date since our lastest one was 4 weeks before the wedding.

9/27/06 at 7:44 pm (reply)

11.

Mrs. Bee says:

we didn’t have a b list, and luckily almost everyone from the a list came. but i feel your pain!

9/28/06 at 12:03 am (reply)

12.

linnybride says:

We sent ours out early (although not as early as we could have — like 8 weeks). I diy-ed and gave certain people who got courtesy invites (people who threaten to come but wouldn’t) earlier deadlines. These people, ironically, never ever sent a reply back ever. I still don’t have them and the wedding was 9/9. After the wedding some sent gifts. We made a decision 4-6 weeks in that those people weren’t coming since they’d need to travel and just invited away. The b list was all co-workers and freinds of parents and since they still had 4-6 weeks (depending on when i got addresses from these people) i don’t know if they all realized what happened.

9/28/06 at 9:41 am (reply)