Wedding Blog

Before I tell you about our centerpieces, let’s talk tables. The round table is, by far, the most popular table used at weddings, that much we know. What we don’t know is that, for whatever reason, multiple round tables totally throw off my chi. They disalign my chakra. They muddle my mojo.

Anyway, that option was instantly nixed, and it was on to the rectangle table. Now…

It’s all over the internet and through the magazines - cut your wedding budget by cutting your guest list. Some places say it nicer than others, but I think Martha Stewart’s people said it the most cutthroat way:
Be Ruthless with the Headcount.

Or check out this thread here at the ’bee.

I’m not super militant, out marching against the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC), but something about this…

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:

1. We wouldn’t have to make any cuts…

I remember way back when Mr. Star and I were trying to figure out how to cut our guest list to a reasonable size -- about a year ago now! -- what a tough time we had figuring out exactly how many people we could invite and what the chances were that we would end up with the number of people attending that we were aiming for. We wanted between 80 and 90 guests to celebrate with us on the big day, but didn’t know what that translated to in terms of how many people we could invite!

Things aren’t always as you predict. I’m just learning this now. I’m an optimistic person by nature, so when we sent out our 64 invitations to a total of 145 people, I figured our head count numbers would settle in somewhere between 90 and 100. That’s a low 62-68% of our guest list checking the "accepts with pleasure" box.

I’ve been watching our guest count grow and grow over the past couple of weeks. The jury is still out for about 10 of the 72 invites we sent out, but the RSVP deadline isn’t until this Friday. I think that’s a pretty good response rate so far!

We’ve had very few declines... 6 to be exact, in addition to the 5 invites we sent to some family members that we were pretty sure wouldn’t be making the trip, but we needed to send an invitation to.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gained a new skill. Marketing reps should be quite proud of me; I now have plenty experience with cold calling friends, family, and strangers about our wedding.

Our invites were sent out a few weeks ago, and the RSVP date was this past weekend (I promise I’ll share the details on our invites soon!). Out of the 175 people we invited, only 25 have actually RSVPed, be it yes or no. The calling game has begun, and it’s not fun.

Wellll… it would be great! Because I’m not talking about insects, I’m talking about bloggers! Specifically, these lovely ladies (plus a few hornets and a baby bee).

The topic of children at a wedding is a controversial one. Some people believe strongly that children should be part of the day, while other believe they should stay at home. We’ve been to weddings where we couldn’t imagine what it would have been like not seeing the adorable flower girl forget to line the aisle with petals, or the ring bearer swinging the pillow…

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about our guests. In the last few months, we’ve had 3 invited couples break up. All 3 were in long-term relationships and all 3 just sort of broke up. I know that all 3 of these break ups were hard, and some more complicated than others. For us, it was hard because through each break up, we…

I admit, when this whole wedding shebang began, I was very naive. I have been obsessed with everything weddings for quite sometime, but even despite that, I never understood all the drama when it came to the issue of the guest list. I just figured we would invite who we wanted and no one we didn’t. Easy peasy, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong, SO VERY WRONG!

[Source]

I…

… Ms. Joey will attempt a difficult task — the seating arrangements.

At first Mr. Joey and I weren’t going to do assigned seats. The lunch is a buffet, so it wasn’t like servers needed to know who sat where. We changed our minds when we started looking at the guest list. It’s a pretty random assortment of people from all phases of our lives, together…

I would say that I have been pretty stress free for most of the planning thus far. I’m not stressing about the wedding actually coming together or whether things will be perfect. Mr. Swan and I will be married so the perfection will happen for sure. BUT I can’t help shake some worries from my mind as we stare down the wedding two months away.…

Way back when, I posted our wedding budget. It was final, and it wasn’t. We knew we only had about $15,000 to spend on the wedding AND the honeymoon, but where we spent it was up for grabs. By my calculations, it was doable if we only got 125-130 RSVPs. Well, here we are, less than 70 days until the wedding, and it looks like…

There’s something about weddings that’s seriously screwed up. So many expectations, it’s impossible to tackle the rationality! Take, for example, guest lists. Obviously, unless you’re in the top 0.1% of the US pay bracket, you’re going to need to trim the fat somewhere. And what the heck is up with people you hardly know - but are related to via some 3rd cousin half removed…