Wedding Blog
Solidifying the guest list seems to be in everyone’s top five most nervewracking parts of planning a wedding. I’ll admit to shedding a few tears over our list. I remember when we booked our venue about a year ago and they noted that the maximum capacity was 120 people. 120! Psh! I can’t even think of 20 people I know right off the top of my head.
Boy, was I wrong, and then some. Mr. Penguin and I sat down to make our “Preliminary List” noting everyone that, in a perfect world, would be invited to the wedding. We came up in the high 300s. In the end, it came down to our immediate family, all our aunts and uncles, and a handful of our close friends. 120 sure adds up quickly.
One thing that I initially thought would save my sanity was to immediately divide up how many people Mr. Penguin would get to invite and how many I would. We split it right down the middle: 60/60. I thought my worries would be over on his side. If he failed to invite people he should have, it wasn’t my problem, and vice versa.
HA! What a joke. Now that the RSVPs are rolling in, I’m beginning to panic for his side. How the hell did he not invite his cousins? I quickly sent out four more invitations to Mr. Penguin’s cousins on his dad’s side, despite the fact that we’ve both maxed out our lists and have recieved 54 “yesses” so far and only 2 “nos.”
Mr. Penguin scolded me yesterday for being so mean to him about his side of the guest list. After all, he’s entitled to choose whoever he wants for his side, and I mine. But I can’t help feeling the guilt, even on his side, for not inviting relatives of his. In the end, I wish I would have taken a little more control of his “friend list” and guilted him into erring on the side of inviting more of his family and less of his friends. But again…maybe it’s none of my business.
How did you split your list, and do you wish you did it differently?
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Oh yes. I wish I would have split the list or had a plan. My FI’s parents and grandparents (not FI) seem to be the ones piling on the people. People that FI doesn’t even really know. And of course I don’t know them either. Would you go to a wedding when you had never even met the couple before? I just can’t really wrap my head around that idea.
I know I just have to let it go, its the right thing to do, but it irks me still. Its the only thing so far that has been a trouble spot.
You have a good heart Miss Penguin, unfortunately that doesn’t always ensure things will go smoother though.
Although I couldn’t have imagined it in the beginning, I would have gone with a no cousin rule. Just aunts and uncles, grandma, and close friends. Although we had a 215 person guest list and it seems like we will only get 140 people attending (tons of out of state guests who won’t make it). The feeling of a more intimate wedding is nice. I stressed for a year over this huge list filled with family that Mr. Michelle doesn’t even remember meeting. But it will all work out.
@ Laura - I’m in the same situation as you. My guy’s parents have invited over 100 people, NONE of whom I know. In a perfect world, we would have had 125 people, all good friends and family, but as it currently stands we’re at 234. And I’ll be lucky if FI’s parents don’t invite more people.
*Sigh* This is the not-so-fun part.
We decided from the beginning that since we were paying for our wedding, we would decide the guest list. And our family has actually stuck to it.
My dad has 12 siblings, which means I have 34 first cousins. Not including spouses or their own children. And I’m not close with most of them - so I’m only inviting my aunts and uncles (most of whom will not come) and a few of my cousins who I actually am close with.
Right now we have 162 people on our guest list, but since we’re doing a destination wedding in another Canadian province, we’re only expecting about 100.
We didn’t do the fair split. Since my family is fairly large it wouldn’t really be fair to cut family from our list while other people not as close got invited. So, we took into account the size of our venue, and made a list of people we “must invite” and people we would “like to invite.” After we compiled our “must invite list,” we subtracted that number for the max capacity of the room, and split the remainder among our parents’ lists and our lists, so we could all evenly invite people from our “would like to invite” lists. In the end, it turns out that we probably won’t be as lopsided on our side as much as we thought!
We split the list 3 ways - my family & parents friends, my fiances family & parents friends, and our close friends and bridal party. Everything must add up to 150 - My Fi wants to invite his 3rd cousins that are in H.S. huh? But its his side of the list so I cant say anything. Yes there was a lot of frustration, tears and I’m still questioning our side of the list — its the least fun part of planning a wedding.
Oh, the guest list–when my brother and SIL got married, they paid for a bulk of the wedding and therefore invited a lot of their friends and colleagues before distant relatives (especially on our side), and this became quite a point of consternation for my parents. As a result, they are footing the bill for my wedding so they can invite whomever they want.
That said, they’ve been super-generous with both the FI and I as well as his family–my mom has reiterated to my FMIL over and over that she can invite as many as she wants (it’s very sweet) because she knows how lousy it feels to be limited and to then have to explain the situation to relatives. So splitting up the list has been pretty painless–for us it’s going to be collecting all of the addresses to send over to my mom so she can start addressing the invites!
We decided to max out our guest list at 300. That being said, we split up the list equally: My parents got 100 people, FI’s got 100 people, and FI and I got 100 people. It worked out well and I did let my mom have some fudge room if needed but she cut hers down too! We had no headaches except for my mom trying to CUT the guest list! Both parents are contributing equally to the wedding so we thought this was a nice way to do it. We’ve ended up have 175 people instead of the 300!
We actually haven’t had these kind of issues. My FI’s family is very small, and his mother wanted to invite only the aunts and uncles, no cousins. My family is much larger, but my mother absolutely knew that we didn’t want a big wedding, so she showed some significant restraint in that area (she did later on come up with a friends list that I thought was a little longer than absolutely necessary, but I do at least know all her girlfriends). We are (shockingly) at 160 now.
Our situation is also that we had planned to pay for the wedding ourselves - and have just immediate family and close friends, which would have worked out to about 40 people. My mother felt strongly about inviting more family, and so she and my father are footing most of the bill.
Thankfully I havn’t had this issue. I have a HUGE family , my FI not so much. I had him make up a tentive list and then brought it to FMIL to make sure he didn’t miss anyone. We are still 20 people shy of our “max” and that is if everyone says yes.
We did have to explain to his grandma that we are having a small wedding and we can’t invite your hairdressers sons mothers uncle , but other than that we’re doing good.
From the beginning, we knew there would be a strict limit to our list — our venue can only hold 130. So we divided that number in 1/2 and I told him he and his parents could invite whomever they wanted so long as it didn’t exceed 65. I only inserted myself when I saw that he was randomly, with no established “rule”, inviting some friends w/guest and others w/o.
We’re doing the 50/50 split. FI’s mom wanted to invite over 200 people, and we weren’t having it–especially since they’re not contributing whatsoever (while FI and I are splitting the bill with my parents for 150 person wedding). So FI had to enforce the no cousins/distant relatives/people he doesn’t even know rule, or his parents can contribute money to cover all the extra 125 people they want.
Needless to say, they cut their list quickly.
We started from ‘the middle’ - immediate family. Then we added friends who are close to both of us, then more family. Luckily, we pretty much agreed. I think it helped to start from the inner circle then work out, rather than think of everyone we wanted there then cut people off.
Well, we didn’t really split the list because we have different sizes of family and our friends are kind of the same. I think we’ve invited just a tad over 200, which is our seating limit… so we’ll see what happens!
I can’t picture you getting scolded at, Pengy, but I can totally picture your reaction to someone attempting to scold you with neck & eye rolls… lol
We split our list 60/40 since I have a much smaller family and a good chunk of them live outside of the country. We’re kinda stressing over the # of guests too but we’re taking a gamble that we’ll get that 20-30% no’s. We’ll see what happens!
We split our list evenly in thirds…. 1/3 of our friends together (thankfully, we were able to fit in our own individual “must have” friends without a problem, so we weren’t fighting over spots!), 1/3 of the list for my parents to choose, and 1/3 of the list for his mother to choose. I don’t necessarily agree with some of the people my parents choose to invite and who they left out, but it’s not my decision, and if anyone complains, I will direct them to my mother for their venting.
I think it worked out very well for us — and we each were responsible for a B list for our own individual list. A no from my parents side meant they would get to invite the next couple, a no from our side meant that we were able to extend the next invitation.
I wish it worked as easily for the rehearsal dinner. 95% of my fiance’s family invited to the rehearsal dinner lives in the city where we are having the wedding, while exactly ZERO of the guests invited from my parents entire wedding list live in that city. That means that ALL their guests are coming from out of town, so my parents would like to invite the majority to the rehearsal dinner, since they will be flying in. My fiance’s mother is paying for the rehearsal dinner and wants to split the list 50/50. My parents can’t understand why her third cousin twice removed who she sees once every 10 years and lives 10 minutes from the wedding gets to come to the rehearsal dinner, and my parents closest childhood friend who they talk to on a regular basis and is flying in 6 hours doesn’t get to come to the rehearsal dinner. I have to say — I think my mother has a valid point, but I’m not going to fight with my FMIL over this.
I’m evil. I made my list then told him he could invite what was left over up to 100 then we’d stop. lol. Now we’ll have to redo the list though because it turns out our little chapel is only going to seat 80. lol. Oh well… personally, all I wanted was a small intimate wedding then it seemed to have somehow turned into this big production. We’ll see what happens, I guess as the year passes.
I said this before I’m from Germany. I don’t get why your parents get to invite people. Maybe the best friend …okay I can see that. But how come they get to invite up to 100 people??
Maybe they pay for it but they used to pay for your birthday parties too and no extra guest were coming.
I’m amazed.
We buested out the math on this one. In our massive Excel spreadsheet of names and addresses, we had columns for “side,” “category,” and “distance.” Side was obvious, category was family or friend, no arguments there, but “distance” was the big one. Parents, siblings, and friends we couldn’t imagine not having were distance 1. Uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends of parents were distance 2. Second cousins, people we weren’t all that close to, 3. I think it went out to 5. With the exception of my late mother’s ancient aunts (technically 3s), we invited only distance 1 and 2. Whenever my in laws would say “Oh, but what about…” we’d explain that “if we invite them, it’s only fair that we also invite the other 45 people in that same range, so we couldn’t possibly.”
My wedding is over a year and a half away…I am procrastinating on the guest list, though my fiancee and my parents already have their lists…at a total of 170 so far (which doesn’t even include MY friends & bridesmaids) so…there are goign to have to be some swift (but hefty) cuts. Not looking forward to that stress!
@Yvonne: my parents are paying for 2/3 of the wedding, Mr. Peng and I are fronting the rest. I think they are entitled to having their own guests, as we are ours, but thats just my opinion. Their guests are also people that have seen me grow up, so its not just random strangers (for the most part)…there are 5 or 6 strangers coming to my wedding that im not to thrilled about but my parents were generous enough to pay for a large portion of the wedding, and I think they’re entitled.
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Mrs. Penguin, Northern California
Age and Occupation: 27, Weddingbee Editor in Chief
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I love the Spice Girls, dogs with underbites, bean burritos, making messes, high fives, avoiding showers, crossword puzzles, blogs, weddings, and blogs about weddings!
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