I am curious how people trimmed their guest lists. My FH and I decided that 300 guests is where we would like to keep our list. When we wrote out our guest lists, my list with my parents lists came to 125 people. My FH and FFILs list is around 255 people, which makes our total about 80 over what we are comfortable hosting. I'm not really sure how we go about trimming the lists. Do we both cut 40 people? Do we figure a percentage to each cut? I know on my list, I probably could cut most of the 80 overage but that doesn't seem fair. I know we have time to finalize our lists but I'd like to start collecting addresses from everyone.
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
- Barbara DeAngelis
Re: Guest List Question
We aimed to have a guest list of about 250 people and it was over 300 originally. The final number we came to was 252 and it took a few nights on the phone for FI and FMIL to make their cuts. My sympathies, my friend.
In terms of trimming--look at your list, and you sort of have to "rank" them in groups by a priority. First list people who are a must invite, no question. Then have a list of people who you would like to invite but could live without. When I trimmed my list I looked back and cut friends from my past or my parents cut some of their friends that I did not knowwell, etc--If I had not spoke to them in over a year I put them on my maybe list. We asked FMIL to do the same. Once we had a better idea of what the guest list looked liked I was able to add a few of those people on, but still had to cut people. It was hard, but I kept telling myself I had not spoke to them in 3,4,5 years... obviosuly not as important as the people I see/talk to frequently. Of course FILS never commented on their list until the day we were ordering invites and tried to add a bunch of random people. FI was awesome and had to stand ground and say no, I'm sorry we had asked you months ago if there were changes so we cannot accomodate these additions.
I have a group of about 10 people in one circle that I'd like to invite but may not be able to because that puts us 10 over what we can afford. There's about 6-10 people who we know will most likely not attend bc of proximity...so I'm sending their invites first and will prob hear back right away and will just send out the other 10 invites based on that. It's not really a B list... they'll go out within 2 weeks of each other.