Weddingbee Blog

I brought it on myself. I’ll own up to that. When we started putting save the dates together, we encountered a few sticky whom-to-invite situations. I should have confronted the issues when they surfaced and taken the time to ask my family/friends/you guys for advice. Instead, I thought to myself: that sounds like a problem for future me! Well, Future Me is here now, and she HATES Former Me for her negligence.

Children…?

Oh, the children issue. We thought we’d skirted it because, when we got engaged, we barely knew anyone with kids under 10. But now our invitation list has changed and currently includes several people with young kids. Our reception is really not kid friendly—a historical property for which we carry a hefty event insurance policy, there’s an open bar, probably cigars for the patio, etc. My mom assured me that most people won’t even want to bring their kids—much more fun to have a grown-up evening to eat a nice dinner, dance and utilize the open bar. I guess we’ll see what happens. If young kids show up on RSVPs, I may hire a babysitter/RN/whatever classifications are important to parents and have him/her available in the downstairs rec room of our venue. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. No biggie.

What I learned:

Be ready to roll with the punches with your invite list, especially if you’re engaged for longer than it takes people to make and birth babies. And if you really don’t want or can’t have children at your event (which I think is perfectly fair and 100% your prerogative BTW), be clear but polite.

“They’re Not Coming, But Invite Them Anyway”

This has happened with a few people, on my side of the guest list and PDog’s. These people have actually, verbally said to our parents, “We can’t come.” The polite thing to do, as I understand it, is send them a formal invitation anyway. But is that polite? I worry that it comes across like I’m soliciting a gift, saying- I know you can’t come, but here’s this fancy invitation so maybe you’ll feel compelled to send us something. I don’t need a gift! I just want you to feel included!

What I learned: Order more invitations than you think you need. In my case, our families are so excited about our wedding, and they just want to share that excitement with people. I still don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, but I’d rather err on the side of making people feel included.

Fringe Folks

We have quite a few people on a “bubble” list. These are people who we’ve drifted from a little bit or who live far away and most likely wouldn’t even come. I’m running low on invitations (even though I ordered lots of extras…) and there are already so many people I’ll want to spend time with on that day. But I still don’t feel good about not inviting people…

What I learned: Flip the situation around and put yourself in their shoes. Would you feel hurt if you weren’t invited to theirs? Or would you understand? Will not inviting them damage your relationship? Will you care if it does?

Did you have any ahhh-what-do-I-do moments with finalizing your guest list/invites?