Wedding Blog
A while back, Mr. Martini randomly ran into an old friend. Years ago they were pretty close acquaintances, but it had been a while since they had a chance to get together and over time they lost touch. The first thing he said to Mr. Martini when he saw him was,
“Hey Mr. M! long time no see. You engaged yet?”
“Actually, I am! I’m getting married sometime in March.”
“Why didn’t I get an invite?”
*awkward pause*
“Actually, we’re still finalizing the guest list…”
“Awesome. Can’t wait!”
After a few more minutes of small talk, they said their goodbyes and parted ways. As he turned to cross the street he yelled back, “See you at your wedding!”
He wasn’t the only one to have asked us about being invited to our wedding. Some have asked me blatantly if they were invited. Some have even asked if they can come. I’ve met so many great people in my 30 years of living, and I would love nothing more than to invite everyone and anyone. But if you’re planning a wedding, you know that is literally impossible.
The guest list has been one of the most tiring aspects of our wedding planning. How do you draw the line? How can you invite one friend, and not the other? Who gets to bring dates?
Our goal is to have about 200 guests at our wedding. We have given our parents each a 50 guest maximum, and 100 for Mr. Martini and I. My dad is stressing about how to shrink his initial guest list of 80. Mr. Martini’s family alone exceeds 50 if we include all of his extended family, and I don’t even want to think about how that is going to go down. And as for us? 140. On list A alone.
It really pains us to have to do this, but we are doing our best to ask our close single friends individually if they intend on bringing a date, and stress that if they’re going to be scrambling to find any date just to bring a date, we would much rather invite someone that we couldn’t invite before. I figure, all of our close friends know each other very well, and it will be fun whether or not you bring someone with you. As for coworkers and other friends that we don’t see as often, we would allow dates because we don’t feel it’s very fair to invite someone who may not know the majority of the guests to come alone and have a bad time.
Of course, married and long term couples we always count together. If we minimize the number of dates, We come very close to our preferred number (at least for our 100), and we’re able to invite more of the friends we would like to invite.
I’ve spoken to several newlyweds, and I’ve been told that about 10-20% of guests decline. In our situation however, 90% of our friends are just a hop and a skip away from the venue, and the 10% of travelers have confirmed already that they can’t wait to attend. It really does make us feel wonderful that out of town guests and even local guests will go out of their way to celebrate with us. I’m the type of person that can’t stand to inconvenience anyone (it’s a curse, really), so it’s awesome that our friends are so excited for us. But it is still stressful!
Mr. Martini doesn’t understand why our friends would be upset about not being invited, or being invited without a guest. I on the other hand, am a paranoid nut who tends to overreact, so the guest list is constantly on the back of my mind. I want to do everything I can not to burn bridges, or make things awkward, or make anyone feel unwelcome. At the same time, we’re all adults, right? I would not be upset if I wasn’t invited to a wedding. But then again, I know better now. Here’s my confession of the day: Many moons ago I once added a date to an RSVP without realizing I wasn’t supposed to, and it still haunts me to this day!
I know. Talk about a cause for anxiety! So I do realize that those who are not experienced with weddings may just not know any better.
How are you dealing with your guest list stress?
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Share this post: Tackling the Guest List
I think the guest list is one of the hardest things you will have to do when planning your wedding. My husband and I had the same fears when we did our list. My 2 cents would be to stick to your initial game plan and go with your gut. If you try to appease everyone then you will lose focus on what you and your future hubby wanted from the start. For our wedding our big struggle was the no children thing. I from the start said it would be an adult wedding. As the time came closer to send out invites I was getting crap from all kinds of people about the no kid thing. I went back and forth and was almost at the point where I was going to invite all the kids-even though it would have been a much larger expense then we had budgeted for. My MOH was like, no what are you doing…this is yours and hubbys day, don’t change what you always wanted or planned just because a few people dislike what you are doing. So, I stuck to my guns and really, everything turned out fine. Everyone had a good time and most important, so did we. I know lots of brides say this-but its true. Don’t worry. It will all turn out ok, I promise.
:o)
I feel your pain!!!! My FI and I decided not to include dates for our local guests if they aren’t seeing someone. This eliminates about 20 STRANGERS that would be at our wedding! Basically, all of our close, local friends hang out with one another, and they will be just find at the wedding without a date. And since so many of our guy friends are single & not even DATING anyone, they would be scrambling to find a random person to bring “just because.” Since we want our wedding to be intimate with all of our family and friends, we decided we’d rather invite 20 additional friends, instead of 20 strangers as “and guests.” As you said, OF COURSE we are inviting all significant others, as well as “guests” for our co-workers and long distance friends, because they won’t know as many people at our wedding. We’re just applying this to all of our close friends who know plenty of people and wouldn’t be lonely!
It sounds like you’re struggling a bit… but think of it this way. If you had a friend who was struggling with the same situation, if you were single, wouldn’t you rather be invited ot the wedding as a single guest, instead of not invited at all because the bride couldn’t fit all of the “plus ones” on her guest list? Its much more important to have your friends there- whether or not they can bring guests- than strangers just to make your friends happy.
OMG I loose sleep over the STUPID guest list almost every night. It’s turned into such a circus I’m ready to throw my hands up in the air and only invite the wedding party, parents and grandparents. THAT would solve everything. I wish I had some great advice but I don’t. Try not to stress like Cindy says — stick to your gut.
Ah! The guest list is the worst part of getting married.
My fiance and i have gone our whole lives making friendships and now we have to rank our friends? It seems so bizarre.
Since we can’t agree on people to cut, our guest list has ONLY been cut from 490 to 410 in 7 months and our wedding is still 10 months away. If we really were going to have 20% decline, I would be OK with inviting all of these people. Yet, with most of our guests living a few miles away, I fear we would have a 99% acceptance rate. And I don’t really want 400 people at my wedding… I would love 200-250 but that is unlikely to happen at this point.
Our tricky issue right now is to figure out if we are sending Save the Dates and if so, to who! If we send them to everyone, we are locked in to who we are going to invite. If we send them to some people, others will find out and feel hurt.
This really keeps me up at night. And my FI thinks I am just nuts for thinking it is a big deal at all.
We are choosing to have a huge wedding first of all! That is where most of our expense will be.
We are also just counting on people not being able to make it.
At least you know the etiquette! The bride told me that I should bring my bf, but didn’t address the envelope to both of us, and did not include a “and guest” or “plus one” box, leading me to believe that guests were not welcome… and I just had to ask her, and she was unaware of the etiquette that only the people named on the envelope are invited!
I’m super paranoid and tend to overreact as well. My bf and I are not yet engaged but we’ve been wedding planning and started the guest list last month We aimed for 200 guests but our list is at 400 right now because I keep adding ppl - I dont want to hurt anyone’s feelings. At one of my friend’s weddings, a mutual friend almost boycotted the wedding bc she was not asked to be a bridesmaid. I was completely horrified after that and am completely petrified that bridges will be burned bc of my wedding. Although I guess friends like that aren’t worth having anyway.
Also, I have a confession of the day that should make you feel better. After starting to plan my wedding and reading weddingbee for 2 years I’ve gotten pretty familiar with wedding do’s and don’ts, but just a mere 2 months ago an invite I received was pretty unclear about whether I could bring a guest or not - My friends who were invited are already married so both names were addressed on the envelope whereas mine just had my name. BUT the couple’s wedding website said “make sure to write your guest’s name…” which completely threw me off. I was just gonna not ask and not bring my bf but the more I thought about it, I wanted to bring a guest if I was allowed one. So, not having the groom’s number OR email, I opted to ask him via facebook (cringe). And I made sure to be clear, saying something like “It’s perfectly fine either way, but just wanted to know if I was allowed a guest since the wedding website said…?” And he responded with “It should be fine. There should be room for one more person since it’s a buffet. Go ahead and bring your bf” I was horrified and wrote back a loooong response that I was definitely not aiming to bring a guest and that if they did not plan for me to bring a guest that I have no problem attending without one, and that I would not want to impose a guest on them since that’s tacky, blah blah blah. And he just responded with a simple, “it’s alright.” To make matters worse, at the wedding the coordinator messed up the seating chart and my bf and I ended up sitting at the table closest to the head table, amongst all of their family and the wedding party.
I’ve found that people who presume they’re invited to a wedding… are people who tend to not have good social skills. They usually assume they are invited to the weddings of everyone they know.
Once I realized that, I felt much less bad about not inviting them.
I def have to go along with others here in saying that some single people in your family are just going to have to come as 1 person. Who wants to pay money for a plate and music and such for someone you don’t even know and that family member might not ever see them or date them again! And some who are dating but I dont really know their dates…your still coming alone!!
this happend to me yesterday with family bluntly saying, when can i expect my invitation!?? And, I just cringed, and did my best to not come off irritated, even though I was. I answered , well our venue is really small and we are having a small wedding, but I would like to have something here (in hometown) for my side of the family.
Seemed to shut them up, but still, how incredibly presumptious, to put me on the spot like that. Do people really expect me to host the 8 aunts/uncles on moms and dads side plus all their kids, thats 16Xmillion.
No! I am having 55 people, thats what my venue budget allowes and plus I want a small wedding with people that actually know me and my Fiance.
My mom recently told me that my dad was inviting everyone at a family gathering where I was not present. Talk about managing expectations.
Then another friend was talking to a mutual friend who ended the conversation like ” if I don’t go down to Miami, I’ll see you at His & Hers wedding”. Meanwhile, we are not inviting her.
We decided that if you are not dating anyone seriously by the time we send the Save The Dates, then you are coming alone.
I’m only inviting one of my co-workers and that’s it.
I’m anxious to see what the % rate of Yeay/Nay will be when we send the invites.
@ beaninca - Well, generally people do expect close extended family to be invited, especially if you’re getting together on holidays. I may not invite all of my adult cousins and their children because there are some that I’ve only met a couple of times, but I couldn’t get away with not inviting my aunts and uncles, even though there are a lot of them. They aren’t just my aunts and uncles, but my parents siblings.
I understand wanting to have a small wedding and inviting the people who are really close to you, but I wouldn’t assume that your extended family knows that your venue only holds 55 people and they’re not invited.
I think a lot of times we get lost in our wedding world and don’t think about what ‘normal’ people know about weddings. I’m pretty guilty of it too, I have to bounce ideas off of my FI to make sure that they’re actually realistic thoughts and don’t just sound good because I read them on a website.
I am so in the same boat; from the get-go, before we had even picked a venue, we said that if it turns out that we can only afford to have family and wedding party, that was fine. Things are going great-we got the reception venue of our dreams (which only allows 150 for a sit-down dinner) gave each of our parents 50 invites for THEIR discretion, and we would get the other 50 to split between us. Well, after choosing a wedding party of 9 per person plus ushers, spouses, and attendants, that number is looking more like 30 and all of a sudden, we’re almost at 150! Both of our families are traveling thousands of miles and from several continents to come…and I’ve been dealing with friends asking “Well, I just think we should have been notified if we weren’t going to be invited”. Three things really irk me: 1-Mmmm, they don’t make uninvited cards, 2-the wedding is 5 months away 3-hellooooo poor etiquette.
Of course, now the F wants to revamp the whole thing and when you’ve spent half of the engagement planning for one thing, it’s hard to all of a sudden budget for 50 extra people!
I so felt your awkward moment.
We’re still a year away from our wedding date and the guest list is almost always on my mind in terms of what has to be done. I come from a massive Catholic family (40 cousins), my fiance has a mum, an aunt, an uncle, and a handful of cousins. I’ve already made the tough decision that I can’t invite all my aunts & uncles, and definitely not all the cousins. We would rather have actual friends there than people we only see once a year at family events. It doesn’t help that we are limited to 100 guests or else there’s no room for a dance floor! (Although that does help with the budget.) My fiance once ran into an old school friend who was getting married and asked for an invite too! We were invited and we went! I feel bad about it now that I know better but it worked out for the best - we had dinner with the couple a few months later and became quite good friends with them. If they hadn’t invited us to their wedding that wouldn’t have happened. Hopefully they’ve forgiven us for our lack of etiquette (and the rather cheap gift we got them, being poor students at the time)! And yes, we’ll be inviting them to ours.
We are having a small wedding (100 people invited, and that is with the guest list being nothing more than skin and bones!) so we definitely had to cut out people who may not be happy about not being invited. As for guests, since our wedding is small, everyone invited knows everyone else for the most part, so unless someone has a significant other, they don’t get to bring a date. I don’t want anyone at my wedding who I don’t know! BUT with that said, a friend of my fiances recently broke up with his longtime girlfriend and apparently told Bryan that he will just bring his sister (whom neither of us knows) instead… yeah, I decided to let it go… Best of luck! And remember, it is your wedding! Do what you want!
Just a thought - 10-20% decline rate seems awfully low. Everyone I know says expect 40-50% decline (and we are well liked!!). Just a thought.
[...] people requesting or assuming they are invited to weddings is a very common occurrence. (And I’m guessing those people have not read my previous blog on assuming you’re not [...]
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Mrs. Martini, New Jersey
Age and Occupation: 30, Telecom by day, Superhero by night
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 32, Investments & Finance by day, Hip hop dancer by night
Engagement Date: May 24, 2008
Wedding Date: March, 2009
Blogging Since: August 18, 2008
Venue: The Venetian
About Me: Things that make me happy: Haribo Happy Cola gummies, TV shows on DVD, buying books although I never read them, 80’s rock ballads, ramen, and of course Mr. Martini! He is the calm, logical and number crunching finance guy. I can’t even multiply double digit numbers in my head and I am so indecisive that trying to choose between light green or slightly lighter green paper stresses me out (Wedding planning is going to be soooo much fun). We both find great joy in nabbing great seats at the movie theater for a blockbuster movie on opening weekend, and we are both absolutely crazy about snowboarding. And he loves to cook, I love to eat!
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