Weddingbee Blog

Hahaha I did the exact same thing! We’re having a REALLY tough time because our ceremony venue is capped at 175 people! A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend of 6 years and we were really excited… until it dawned on me that what was best for my guest list was not necessarily best for my friends! And then they got back together anyway… bummer for the guest list. :-[

We’ve been lucky so far that we are currently under our guest count. As it stands, we still need to make 10 more friends in order to meet the food and beverage minimum at our venue

I have a fairly small family, and my parents have agreed to not invite anyone I don’t know. FI has a big family, but there is an agreement between all of them that not everyone will be invited (grandparents, aunts, uncles will be invited; distant cousins will not). This arrangement has really helped us to make our guest list small (for now.)

With that being said, I see both sides of the issue. Previous comments have shown how a bride must refuse giving a friend a “plus one” if he/she is currently single.

But on the other hand, from the single guest’s perspective — when it comes for him/her turn to get married, he/she MUST invite the married couple, even if she is not close to the husband (or wife).

So you spend $100 on her dinner, but when it comes to her wedding, she needs to spend $200 on you and your husband.

It’s an unfortunate double standard.

@bloom - That is a really great point.

What I’m struggling with right now are my myriad cousins. I want to celebrate with some of them, but I haven’t seen them in years and I don’t know their husbands or kids names. I’m not sure I’ll see them before I get married AND I’m not going to have much time to hang out with them and meet them all at the wedding itself.

So much to figure out.

Good luck! We invited 400-ish and had 320-ish show up. We had a great time, but the guestlist was a huge point of angst.

We cut out every possible “and guest” possible, and also work friends, high school friends, etc., that we don’t hang out with on a regular basis. (i.e. in the year/six months before the wedding)

Our venue fit 400 people and if we’d needed to, we could have paid that much as well, but if it’s not in your budget or that number won’t fit in your venue.

At some point you really have to say–we won’t see that person, and if we do, they’ll understand why they weren’t invited to the wedding. It seems like people don’t seem to get that weddings are a “per head” expense and that they are uber expensive these days…but people are generally coming around. When it comes to YOUR pocketbook and YOUR sanity, you need to say, “we can do without so-and-so.” If they are that good of a friend, then they will understand and still be around for that once-a-year reunion or something.

For us, family was untouchable and we both have large families…in the end it was a great family reunion kind of thing in that case.

*sigh..this is my biggest problem right now too. we’re footing our own bill..his family is HUGE (So big they’re like..what was so and so’s child’s name?) and mine is small..our guest list is already way too big for our reception space..so our plus one rule has become this:
if the guest will know other people at the reception, there is no plus one (no matter how long they’ve been dating). if the guest will know absolutely no one at the reception but me or my fiance, they will be allowed a plus one. we decided on this rule mostly because most of my family friends (who are like family to me since my family is so small) are dating (not married) but they all know each other since we were kids. so it’s not like they’re going to be alone. sounds a little harsh (and we haven’t exactly told them this is what we decided), but it seemed like the best way for us (this rule actually really only affects them since we don’t have too many other friends who might being a plus one).

e, We were planning on doing the exact same thing.. except then we realized that every single non-married friend knows several other friends, so we’re doing it that if you’re not engaged or married, and we aren’t close friends with your S/O (case in point.. my college roommate is dating my fiance’s college roommate, so we would invite each on their own, they just happen to be dating!), then you don’t get a plus one. I’ve run it past a few friends, and they are all FINE with it. Everyone has said they will have a great time regardless, and one or two even said it will be nice to just hang out with their friends and not have to worry about making sure their S/O is having a good time when he/she doesn’t really know anyone (I was a little surprised to hear that myself, but I guess it makes sense!).

First of all, realize that this is NOT a family reunion. You are under no obligation to invite everyone that’s related to you just because they all want to see each other. Honestly, you’ll be too busy to enjoy the company of those haven’t-seen-in-years relations because you’ll be focused only on the wedding itself pretty much until the reception is half over.

Especially for my family who lives in other states, I feel guilty knowing how much they shelled out for plane tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, and then I barely had time to say hello to them. Your best bet is to remember that it’s a wedding celebrating you and you h2b, and the only people that should be there are the ones who generally want to celebrate with you (and not in the because-she’s-so-and-so’s-daughter kind of way.)

If you don’t care one way or the other if someone comes or not, nix them. Let someone else host a real family reunion where you’ll actually have time and be in the mindframe to relax and chat with whomever you’d like to catch up with. But don’t let your wedding get turned into a different type of family function…