Weddingbee Blog

As promised, I wanted to report our final guest list statistics. I’ve always found these kind of posts helpful, even if just for finding some peace of mind while planning your list.

You might recall, I mentioned that our final guest list was 297. Yeah, well, that was before the week that I like to call “Guest List Goes Wild Week”.

Apparently, since we were a few (THREE) people under capacity and feeling really laid back about it, everyone - my parents, Burger’s parents, and Burger and I - padded their lists a little bit. That padding bumped our overall guest list from 297 to 321. THREE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE.

Enter Cheeseburger meltdown.

After some frantic phone calls, a few tears, and a mild panic attack, the six of us were attempting to cut our lists down.

The majority of the problem was my fault. You see, I included Burger’s brother & sister and their dates as part of Burger’s Family’s list and my brother & sister and their dates as part of my parents’ list - and our parents included them in ours because our siblings are in the bridal party. Whoops. It might not sound like a lot, but 9 people is almost half of the unaccounted for additions to the original 297! I felt terrible.

After a few days of meticulous cuts, we had our final number. 306. Only six people over. I could live with that (nervously… very nervously).
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When I was considering venues and forming our initial guest list (wow that was a long long long time ago), I was always interested in any information regarding how many of the invited guests actually come to the wedding. The numbers of course differ based on many factors, such as the size/location/time/etc. of the wedding, but I wanted to quickly share our numbers.

Our venue capacity is 60 people. We invited about 65 people, 61 of whom could realistically make it (we were 99.99% sure that a few older relatives would not be able to make the cross-country/international trip). About 17 invited guests are from the Bay Area (i.e. close to the venue), and the rest were from out of town, so we considered it a semi-destination wedding.

Of the 65, 48 have RSVPed as “yes”. That is around 70%, or 75% of the 61 guests we felt could realistically make it. This seems like a reasonable percentage to me.
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This is by no means a new issue in the wonderful world of planning a wedding. Figuring out The Plus One Situation is difficult for a lot of couples when building their guest lists. And while we finished our guest list a while back, The Plus One Situation has lingered on my mind.

We started with a blanket rule - any of our friends that were dating someone seriously who we’d met before, were invited with guests. We addressed their invitations to Friend & Friend’s SO by name so that there would be no confusion. As in, if Friend’s SO couldn’t make it, they should come alone.

We handled friends who didn’t fit those criteria on a case by case basis. Generally, we did not give single friends guests because we were already over our ballroom’s capacity. However, in certain situations we made some exceptions. For people who we really wanted to come, but who didn’t know many other people (or anyone, for that matter) that were invited, we allowed an “& guest”. In these cases, our friends were extremely gracious and appreciative, which made us very happy with our decision.
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When we originally started to plan, we wanted to invite everyone who had been an important part of our lives and our families’ lives. Our guest list was enormous. As time went by, we started setting up our priorities. We both want the wedding to be about the joining of two families. We felt a more intimate wedding would allow us to really enjoy the special moments with our closest family and friends.

In the beginning we stressed about hurting peoples’ feelings and didn’t want to leave anyone out. But if we invited more people, it would mean less time with those who are the most important to us. Our guest list began at over 350 people. We ended up getting it down to about 200 people. That is not what some would call intimate, but when you come from a large family and Christmas includes about 100 people, this is quite a cozy wedding in my eyes.

Michael Sparks Keegan photography

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I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the first things I wanted to do after Mr. Guinea Pig and I got engaged was to make a guest list. I’m not even sure why, exactly, but I was SO excited about making this list of everyone we loved and wanted to share in our celebration.

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So we made a list, sent it to our parents for any additions, and then sat on it. Of course, at this time we also decided that we would be getting married 18 months later. This list remained essentially untouched until we decided to send out our save the dates: so about 9 months later, we emailed out a Google Form to everyone on the list asking them to fill in their addresses. {This very handy feature has already been blogged about here by Ms. Fondue, and now Google has actually teamed up with Style Me Pretty to make lovely templates for this, too!}
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That is the one thing I never ever ever thought that I would hear myself saying. I am extroverted, I am outspoken, I am decidedly non non-confrontational. That’s not to say that I am confrontational, but I don’t let people walk all over me, I speak my mind, I say what other people are thinking but are too scared to say—that’s just who I am. I’m a lot like my dad in that way, and you’ll either love me or despise me, but I stay true to myself either way.

A guy once wrote in my high school yearbook that I was “ruthless”- I took it as a compliment. I’m not a mean person, I’m actually very nice, polite, and compassionate—until someone wrongs me, then I go for the jugular (granted… I do choose my battles). That said, on the rare occasion that someone gets me to that point, I say my piece and proudly exclaim to Mr. Rainbow, “A doormat, I am not!” That is, until now.

Do you remember this little post in which I wrote about cutting down our guest list? How proud I was to share the news—that we got our guest list down to 30 people? 30 people! That is awesome! I’m sorry, was awesome. Yes, you read correctly… was awesome.

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“Checkin’ it twice…”

Our guest list, that is.

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While ’naughty’ and ’nice’ don’t quite figure into the equation, making our guest list has proven to be one of our more difficult tasks.

Our total number of invitees was something that I wanted to estimate early. Like, within a month of our engagement early. You see, I knew we would have quite a large number, and I figured that it might restrict our reception location search (it did - we only had two options, one of which was out of budget). So when I asked our parents to start working on a rough number right away, I think they were taken a bit by surprise.
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We’ve hit a road block. Wedding planning is easy when you’re trying to decide cake flavors or floral varieties (the things that feel important but that, ultimately, are not very), but it’s hard when you’re fighting your family. The details are kind of personal, but the problem is probably somewhat universal: we’re out of space on the guest list, and that’s making some family members pretty angry. When someone as close as a grandmother (or, more precisely, the only living grandparent either of us has) threatens not to attend the wedding over it,* it makes you rethink some things (and also makes lining envelopes feel pretty irrelevant).

I’ve struggled with writing this post because it does touch on some really personal issues, but I know that many of us have hit road blocks just like this… and in the happy happy world of wedding planning, sometimes some of us can benefit from knowing that we’re not alone when the people we love can’t meet our expectations, and that there are others sailing in the same boat. At least, I know I could benefit from it.

I’m pretty lucky because it’s not affecting the most important thing:
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Something that has surprised me, and continues to surprise me is how freaking difficult making a guest list is. I thought it would be a 3-hour session, everybody sitting around a table a la Father of the Bride, and we’d be finished. (Damn that movie.) It didn’t even occur to me that we would be working on it for at least 3 months. It’s still even in the really, really, really, really raw stages. Not getting down to the “Who lives where, with whom, etc.” stuff. Not even to the plus-one issue. I even have a folder dedicated to the guest list on my desktop. That’s just sad.
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When it came time to choose who we wanted at the wedding, initially we planned on just those that we are closest to (we actually made this decision before we were officially engaged). We thought about inviting a few friends along, but then it turned into “Well, if I invite this person, then I also have to invite x, y, and z”, and at that rate our list could have ended up a mile long! We both agreed to a small group, family only, and thought it would be easiest that way to organize the trip. So at this point, our list looked like this…
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So, I have this friend, and he’s a really great friend. We met in college and whenever I am with him I cannot stop laughing. We get each other’s humor, and I just know I’m going to have a good time with him. The problem? He’s a little unpredictable. And that is really just a euphemism for “gets hammered”.

Source

So, he was just going to be a guest at the wedding, not in the wedding party, or so I thought…
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Woo hoo!!!

I am happy to say that we will NOT go over our max capacity of 350 - it actually looks like we’re going to be UNDER! It makes me so happy!

This may seem like a(nother) small feat, but let me recap the statistics for you: we sent out ~210 invitations. We invited a whopping 444 people, which means we would be BARELY safe if 20% said no. And we were getting a TON of yesses from our OOTowners. So, I was definitely getting the Guest List Sweats.

So now we’re contemplating: do we try to fill it up a bit? Boost up the appetizers? Or just pocket the extra savings? Hmm.

Did you get the number of yesses and nos that you needed/wanted? If you came in under your goal number, what did you do with the extra $$$?

That’s what we’re currently doing to our guest list, and it feels oh-so-good.

I have found that, when it comes to the guest list, I am quite different than your average bride.

If we could get our guest list down to 25 people, I would be in wedding planning euphoria. Well, today, I’m happy to say that we’re close to that number. Very close. Closer than we’ve ever been before. We started of with 75, then we cut it down to 50, and then… and then.. 30! That’s right, we are inviting 30 guests!

We wanted something small, intimate, personal. That’s not to say that a wedding with a 300 person guest list can’t be personal, but logistically, it is much more difficult to incorporate those personal, homespun touches that I love so much.

That said, I’d like to share my personal guest list dwindling mantra:

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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 this is my kinda table. Clean lines, not too busy… that’s definitely a good thing. Since we’ll be having such a small wedding, we’ll have 6 8’ banquet tables. 3 end-to-end on one side of the dance floor, and 3 end-to-end on the other side, with us at a round table in the center. Like this:

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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 rubs me the wrong way. Good ole Merriam-Webster says that ruthless means having no pity, merciless, cruel. The wedding industry sets these standards of beauty and indulgence to the point where the average bride must RUTHLESSLY cut her guest list to maintain the American Dream Wedding.

Yes, limiting the guest list is usually a necessary evil due to space and budget constraints. I don’t blame the bride who has to manage unwieldy lists that are bloated by more of their parents’ friends then they can shake a stick at. However, for our wedding, we decided that our priority would be to include as many of our friends and family as possible. Children were not invited, but not because we wanted to save a buck - because we wanted our guests to have the freedom to enjoy themselves during our wedding festivities.
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