Suggestions for guest list?

AL330 · February 2012

Newly engaged and planning a wedding for 2014. Before we begin, we already plan on it being a very large wedding and reception as my fiance comes from a family of 9, and his parents are both from families of 9 and 10. Long story short, we need to get an idea of who we'll be inviting in order to research venues/reception sites. I'm wondering what suggestions people have for creating a tentative guest list? I was thinking I would just create an Excel spreadsheet, including address and phone numbers so it's easily compiled into one document, which we can later create a mail merge for evelope labels. I see there is a guest list on this website, but not sure if it's very helpful?

Ideas? Thoughts? I appreciate your input!

HobokensFury · February 2012

For the initial list I wouldn't even go as far a getting addresses and phone numbers because of you contact them about wedding related stuff you have to invite them. Make a list of must invite (VIPs, family, close friends) and would like to invite (distant relatives, not very close friends, mom's friends etc) and go from there. BTW although TK offers colored text options no one uses them because it's hard to read.

ElisabethJoanne · February 2012

For the initial list, we put households into Excel, and divided it wedding party, bride's family, groom's family, bride's friends, groom's friends, bride's parents' friends, groom's parents' friends, and color-coded local v. out-of-town. You may not need the divisions, depending on who's paying and your attitude. I needed it once my future husband, who said he has 0 friends, handed me a list of 46 friends he wanted to invite, and his parents' list came back even longer.

Around the time we order invitations, we'll gather full names (We're inviting children, so this is quite the task), mailing addresses, and an electronic form of contact in case of missing RSVPs. The divisions also make it clear whom to ask to gather this information. If it can't be gathered while the invitations are being printed (letterpress, so it'll be awhile), that family won't be invited.

TiffannieF · February 2012

When we made our initial guest list we start with parents and siblings then grandparents.

Then we started with my oldest uncle (I had the larger family) then listed his adult children, the went ot the next uncle then his adult children etc etc.

We did not put numbers or addy's on there at that time.

After we got everybody who we wanted to invite we started putting a 1, 2, and 3 by names. 1-for peole we HAVE to invite (parents, siblings, g-parents, etc), 2-people who we should invite, 3-people that it would be nice if they were there.

Next was picking our date.

The next thing we did was figure out our 'budget'. I first shopped at venues to get an idea on how much it would cost. Once we got quotes we knew we could afford 100 people and went from there (we mainly could only invite peole on our list of 1 and 2).

kaceymarie · February 2012

you can make a guest list on here. you can add addresses, numbers, and divide into groups.

MiLadyK · February 2012

I used google docs spreadsheet so that FI and I could edit from anywhere as we remembered people.

Actually the google doc holda all of our wedding palnning, prety much. The guest list is just one tab.

We started with households and filled in names as we debated, with check columns for location (we didn't know what state we were going to hold teh ceremony in for a bit there). We started working on addresses after we had a final list.

DramaGeek · February 2012

Ditto the others on holding off on addresses.

We did ours by family branch. We started with immediate family and worked our way out. Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins, great aunts/uncles/cousins, etc. We did one branch at a time, so when looking at our list it was categorized by family (maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, paternal grandfather and same for H). In our families there is no such thing as a small wedding, so we didn't end up doing any cutting, but if we had we'd have used that list to do so.

B&K10+13+12 · February 2012

I actually purchased wedding planning software (I know, I'm lame). I'm really gald I did though, it's helped so much with managing our guest list. The program is called iDO wedding couple edition.

Suggestions for guest list?

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