Wedding Blog
I had been told by my friends that the guest list was one of the hardest wedding related tasks. I had heard the jokes when I mentioned I was working on mine: “Good luck!”
I had thought that it didn’t apply to me.
These are the reasons I thought I was going to have an easy go of the guest list:
These are the reasons why I ended up with everyone else on the wedding guest list roller coaster:
We settled on a guest list as we had to get the Save-the-Dates out in quick order around the 4th of July. My personality (read: not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings), combined with Ewe Mother’s exuberance for inviting and a dash of Ram Father’s practicality, eventually met in the middle.
The hardest part of the process was setting emotions to the side. People weren’t cut from the list because we hated their guts and would barf wedding cake if we saw them at the wedding. There were simply situations that would prove to be a damper on the wedding celebrations, or just a plain, old lost connection. Ram Father helped so much - he took on the responsibility of explaining to family members how the decisions were made.
Are you stressed about your guest list? Has anyone in the family stood up for you and your decisions?
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My guest list has been the biggest chore and pain in the butt of everything so far, tbh. I hate all the politics involved. I also really stink at trying to cut people. We need to shave off around 100 people just in invites. :-/
ARRRGH the guest list. On the one hand my parents both say “we need to cut the list.” On the other, they won’t let us cut anyone. 
oh my the guest list was the hardest part. We were trying to merge his Italian american family and my irish italian family and our large network of close friends. My mom sent me her list that included 250 people. And his side kept adding and removing people from the guest list (even after save the dates were sent). We finally just created set rules–no one past second cousins were invited, no friends of the parents, no friend who didnt know us as a couple, etc.
We are having a SMALL wedding…..So we invited 83, expecting on the max……60 to show….So far we have not received a no, and we are at 74!!!! AHHH!!!
THE. WORST.
I, like you, would have never imagned how stressful this would be. Where do you draw the line? Who gets to bring their SigOther? Do you invite the long-time friend who is a bit unstable and could explode at any minute? Do you need to reach out and justify to people why they aren’t invited? Ugh….
Major cause of stress this week! Like you, we were pushed to finalize it so we could send STDs. We’ve been good about our list, but neither of the moms will budge - ugh.
I also naively thought “We totally won’t have a problem!” since my fiance and I are paying for it ourselves, and therefore are only giving the families very limited input. Yeah - we’re up to 150 invites so far (for a wedding that’s not happening until September, 2010), and if we get an exceptionally good RSVP rate, I’m not sure what we’re going to do!
Guests lists are seriously a pain in the butt. I’ve just decided not to think about it right now :). ahahaha
YES the guest list is beginning to get a wee bit stressful. Our venue cannot comfortably accommodate more than a certain amount of people, but the list keeps creeping up and up…
i’m expecting the boy to be the pragmatic one as he is with practically everything else. which will help because i’d probably feel obliged to invite everyone i’ve ever known.
I’m still thinking that our guest list is going to be easy peasy. Hopefully mine actually will be… I’m more worried about dealing with our crazy families on the day of.
We still don’t have a set list, and we’ve been hounding our parents for months about it. Now that we have our STD’s, it’s time to get it figured out. I think we’re avoiding it for some of the same reasons as you — it’s a hard part of planning.
Oh the guest list! Not a problem with M’s family, as they are small & should only be about 30 people - but MY family! Oh my goodness. I asked mom for the list - I got the ENTIRE Christmas card list (and let me just add - Mom could single-handedly support the greeting card industry). She had 300 people on her list! Including my pediatrician that I haven’t seen since, well, since I was a kid (duh!). And the librarian from the town we lived in when I was 12! And… oh the list goes on. She’s been good about cutting it down - questions from my dad such as “when was the last time you talked to this person?” and “tell me one recent fact about that person” have been very helpful in cutting out the people she hasn’t stayed in touch with (other than through the annual Xmas card).
Sadly/Fortunately I am the relative that keeps tabs on most of my side of the family. Which made it really hard trying to reign in my large-ish family so that we could invite a few of our friends. In the end I am having to cut children we’re not close to. I am completely dreading having to tell my cousins their kids aren’t invited but we’re just flat out of room and money. 
Way to go Papa Lamb! Explaining why people didn’t make the cut is a hard job. I wish I’d been a little more adamant about cutting the guest list. . . I wanted a 60-person wedding, and got. . . 300!
We had set a limit of 100 people due to budget. We made it a adult only reception since our ceremony is at 7pm on a Sat and we are doing cocktails and apps. That help cut our list down to 100.
Ughh this was definitely one of the hardest parts of planning. We decided not to include children, and we set the family cut off bar at “no second cousins.” No one has complained yet (that I know of!). I am hoping that people understand.
The hardest part of planning…hands down! I thought we were beyond the annoying guest list debates when a week and a half before our wedding we have people asking if we can add them to our list. It just keeps coming back! I love everything about planning, just NOT THE GUEST LIST!
Our guest list is a nightmare… it keeps growing and growing. I only wanted 50 people originally & we’re already up to 75. It’s hard to cut out family members… my extended family & I are close on both sides. I’m the 1st to get married out of the kids…
It is most definitely the worst part of planning a wedding.
I didn’t think we’d have a guest list issue either, but it turns out… it’s just a fact of wedding planning! LOL! We said no kids, and then that was an issue. There are family members FI didn’t want there, and that was an issue. And he’s inviting friends of his that I’ve never met… WHAT?!?
Hehehehehe! Ahh, the joy of Guest Lists.
This was a nightmare! I actually stayed up all night despite work the next day because of the guest list. Finally I told my mother that the wedding is in the summer and her teacher co-workers that she has no contact with outside of school arent invited. They wont miss it because by the time the wedding is over, school hasnt started yet and they wont even know about it since they dont talk. We are paying ourselves and my side of the family is 3 times larger than my FH side. I dont think its fair to him that he has to consider not inviting people because my mother feels her coworkers would be slighted. I eventually decided that if anyone had a problem with this, I dont care. Weddings are way to expensive to invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Its either family or strangers, and Family always comes first.
I’m terrified of making the guest list! I made a preliminary one for my side alone and had 150 people… um, what? Thats not really even including our mutual coworkers. I wanted a small wedding but… oh dear.
we’re in the middle of it right now! 98% done- with maybe 10% addresses to hunt down- but I keep adding “work friends” to the list- usually as I walk around the office and say… oh I can’t leave so and so out… Thankfully my MR and I work at the same place and most of our work friends are mutual.
@redherring: Really? Our parents are paying and I keep thinking, if only we’d paid ourselves, we wouldn’t be having this nightmare! Now I know better.
Of course, if we’d be paying ourselves we’d be at city hall. Which is looking better and better every day. (Seriously. Holla, Mrs. MJ!)
(sigh) guest lists are not fun! It was a tough realization when I discovered that I just couldn’t invite everyone I wanted to. The preliminary list was over 150. We cut it down to 75 (that was quite the task!) good luck!
It’s so hard, we told our parents we wanted 150 people, MIL MB alone invited 130 people. I think we’ll be fine, but I’m a little too OK with those no’s.
Yeah, no matter what, there will always be people you can’t invite. It sucks!
I’m scared, too. Our preliminary list was over 150, and then my mother started going on about relatives who would be deeply hurt if they weren’t invited (even though I barely know them). This from the lady who didn’t invite anyone from her parents’ generation to her own elopement, except her mom and dad…my DAD’s parents weren’t there! LOL. Moms. I finally said, we’re paying, we’re hosting, we’re inviting…throw us a reception if you’d like.
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Miss Lamb, Norfolk
Age and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security Consultant
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate Student
Engagement Date: January 2009
Wedding Date: January 2010
Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera House
About Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
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