I finally get to plan our wedding!!! (plus a guest list question)

emmyroo

I'm new.  Sort of.  I posted once or twice just after I got engaged, but stopped because we weren't planning a wedding yet.  But, I'm back because now we finally are!!

So, let me introduce myself... my name is Emily and my fiance is Andy.  We live in La Crosse, WI, but I'm originally from the cities (parents still live in Cottage Grove) so I'll be doing some things up there.  The wedding will take place here in La Crosse, though.  We have unoffically officially set a date for June 29 (maybe 28) 2013.  We haven't put any money on it yet.  We got engaged on Feb 14, 2010.  Which was forever ago.  The reason it took so long for us to set a date is because we were waiting for me to get a job so I could move to La Crosse, which finally happened in September!  We're also starting too look at buying a house!  It seems we have been waiting forever for this, but now we finally get to take some big steps in our lives together!  I'm so glad to finally have a real date to say when people ask, "So, have you set a date yet?" instead of "Oh, we haven't gottent that far yet, but we're looking at a couple years from now."  I've started looking at venues around here and I already told my mom to start making a list of people she wants to invite.  Which brings me to my question:

So, Andy has mentioned that he wants to keep the wedding reasonably small-ish.   Like 150 people, tops.  I agree because I just don't know that many people, I wouldn't like being around large crowds, and for cost purposes.  But, what he said was "75 people each."  Which poses a potential problem.  My family is bigger than his by at least double, if not triple.  I have about 50 people just in family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.)  We all are extremely close, so there is no way I could ever pare that down.  Add to that the appx 15 close friends of mine that must come, and my parents get about 10 people they can invite (like family friends, friends from church, etc).  Andy's extended family, by the same parameters, is about 20 people.  And he's only got about 10 or so friends he'd want to invite, so his parents get to invite about 45 of their friends, vs my parents 10.  Is that fair?  Is it fair because my family is bigger and we will have the same number of guests?  Or is it unfair because his parents get so many more guests than mine?  I see it both ways.

How would (or did) you handle the guest list in this situation?  Split the guestlist evenly down the middle, or subtract family first then divide up the remaining "guest allowance"?

Thanks in advance for your opinions!

jennipea382

Hi and congrats on everything!

I can see it both ways, but I'm definitely leaning toward you having more guests. I think what you should both do is sit down and draw up a list of "must-have" guests (is that a weird term?). Like absolute have to have guests that you couldn't imagine not having there. See where your numbers are at with that, then add in the extras (parent's friends, family you're not as close to, etc).

I don't think it should be about having an even amount of guests. My FI has a HUGE family (his dad has 12 brothers and sisters, all with many kids and THEY have kids so my FI has like 80 cousins). Luckily for me, he's not planning on inviting ALL of them since he hasn't even met a lot of them. But if he were close with all of them (somehow), I'd probably sacrifice a few people off my list.

So I guess what I'm saying is it should be a compromise. Yeah, it might feel weird to him if he has 50 guests and you have 100, but would he rather have a bunch of his parent's friends that he doesn't know well or the family and friends you feel close to?

wittyschaffy

Our guest list was very heavy on my side and not so much on my DH's.  He has a HUGE (50 1st cousins on one side alone)family but he sees very few of them regularly so we actually didn't invite most of them since DH hasn't seen them more than once in the last decade.  My parents are very social and we have a lot of "family friends".  His parents, socially awkward and don't get out much.  They put together a "must have" list and we recycled the one from my sister's wedding 5 months earlier.  DH and I added in our friends.  Probably in the end it was 2/3rds my friends/family and 1/3rd his.  I dont' think that it has to be split down the middle. 

Anorton1204

First of all congratulations on starting your planning!  It's a small world I actually grew up in Cottage Grove, and went to School and Winona State thats where I met my Fiance, his brother and SIL are getting married in Onalaska in July!  This is a very interesting question in the fact that I didn't even think about making sure it was even or not.  We just started putting our list together and realized that we were probably going to have 150-175 coming and it was pretty equal on both sides but I dont think it is necessarily a big deal unless it was super uneven, but then again you're becoming one family so everyone is there for both of you.

GL

emmyroo

Anorton, small world! I love Onalaska- it's so scenic! Thanks for the feedback in guest lists. I suppose it would be much different if we were getting married in CG because all my parents' friends would be invited and would probably come. Since it's going to be in la crosse, I don't know that many of them will travel 2 to 3 hours. There are some I KNOW will come anyway, like my sister's godparents. But then there are the little old ladies that would love to come but would have trouble with the travel. FI's parents are also very social. They had a combined grad party for FI and his sister when they both graduated from college and high school (respectively) at the same time and sent out probably 60 or 70 invitations. I suppose we'll have everyone make their lists then cut what family friends we have to to get the list to the right number.

knmd2012

I think having both sides make a list is a great start. My fiancé has a huge family too- his stepmom (who is more like his actual mom) has 9 brothers and sisters. We're inviting 260 people, 115 from my side and 145 from his (and I'm still inviting more friends/family friends than he is). We had each family make a "wish" list and then cut his side down as much as we could without causing a fmaily feud, then my family and I cut ours down accordingly. You have a LONG time to work on this though if you're not getting married until 2013, but I know I would already be worried about the guest list too if I were you. PS- I'm also new and I'm the first one from our group of friends to get married, so I might be asking some questions here in the future too

graysquirrel

I don't think that it is all that fair to say that each side should/can invite an equal number of people. No two families are the same, so it is unrealistic to say that each gets X number of people.

In order to keep things fair, we set a tier on the family tree to cut things off at. So for example, we agreed not to invite any of our parents' cousins or their families. We each got to invite everyone below that point on the family tree, if that makes sense. We figured out a cut-off point that was equal vs a number that was equal. I happen to have a lot more cousins than H does, but I still got to invite them all so that it was fair. I suggest setting a point like this where you both can be happy.

tpender13

Welcome! So exciting to finally start the planning, I imagine...

I agree with PPs in that you should write up your must-have guests first. This can probably be done by just you and your FI to start -- think listing out your aunts/uncles/cousins/godparents/close friends whatever that you think you'll probably want to invite. We did this right away and it helped us decide early on that we weren't going to invite any extended family, just immediate and close friends. That alone ended up being close to 100 people, and we wanted to keep things small-ish and simple. Anyway, make that list, get it where you're comfortable with it, and if your parents will want to invite some of their friends, you can tell each set that they can have X number of invitations. That way, everyone's family is included and each side has the same number of extras.

leggwilliams

Hi and welcome!

I would suggest each coming up with a list of all the people you would like to invite and then add up each subtotal and see what you get. Maybe if his family is smaller he won't be able to come up with as many guests as he's thinking, anyways.

Either way, then you can both come together, look at how many guests you have, and see where you can cut down on either side. If neither of you feels you can cut, you may have to adjust the guest count. I think it is odd to say "we're going to split the guest list 50/50" when one of you obviously has a bigger family. DH's family is HUGE and pretty much dominated the guest list but we both had to deal with that. It's a compromise :-)