August 2012 Weddings

Guest List Woes

So right now our guest list has 110 people on it.  It originally had 146 on it (after consulting with our moms).  That means we already took off 36 people...

We found what will probably be our venue.  With a dance floor, it seats 75-80 people comfortably, which is actually the number of guests I've dreamed of having at my wedding for forever anyway.  It also means we have to knock THIRTY more people off our guest list.  I don't know how we can possibly do that.

Most of the people we already knocked off came from our friends list and the people who are left are the ones we refuse to cut off.  We don't want to knock any more of them off to allow room for people we either a) don't know, or b) haven't seen in years (some of whom neither of us know at all).

How do we approach the guest list thing with our parents?  We are paying for the entire wedding and much of our family list is people our moms added when we sent them our original list that we came up with on our own.  How do I tell my mum I'd rather not have my great-aunt (who I haven't seen in 5+ years) or my creepy great-uncle and his wife (who I haven't seen in 10+ years) there?  Even harder, how do I (or Chris) approach FMIL about all the people she added to her list that Chris doesn't even know??  I don't want to drop more friends- who I have regular contact with and who have been with Chris and I through our entire relationship- just to make room for these people we didn't even think to put on the list in the first place.

Sorry this is so long.  I'm stressed out... obviously.

Re: Guest List Woes

  • Ugh the guest list is becoming an issue with us too, because we're (like you) footing the bill for it. Advice I read - after the huge guest list had already been made - was to give each person or group: FI, you, your parents, FILs; a set number that they could invite. For instance, make it fair. Tell your Mom and FMIL you each have x people. Then you're also then not responsible for making the cuts. So if its 80 you could say each "group" can do 20 people? Or maybe invite family then do the dividing?

    I dunno, in theory I would imagine this works, but our guest list is still 30+ what like it to be lol so I'm prob wrong person to be offering advice ...
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  • jacquiroxxjacquiroxx member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    edited May 2011
    I really appreciate the advice. I'm not sure grouping ppl would work for us- my parents are divorced and remarried, so my immediate family (w siblings and grandparents) is 16 people alone. Plus my 2 cousins whose mother died and my mum informally adopted, with of them getting married this weekend, that's basically my entire list. It doesn't include aunts and uncles who are close.... Chris' immediate family with grandparents and siblings is only 7 people, so we'd end up with only my immediate family, and he'd have all his cousins, aunts, uncles... Even great aunts/uncles while there would be key close family members missing on my side. Friends we come under 40 on... We share the same friends for the past 10 years, so at least there's that. I think we just need to sit down with our individual parent and talk about every person on the list to determine who we really really need to invite. I guess we have veto power since we're paying, but I'd rather not step on FMIL's toes because we are fairly close. I don't want to step on my mum's toes either. I feel like were gonna have to doing some stepping on toes tho, to make it work. Oy vey...
  • i2012doi2012do member
    First Anniversary First Comment

    Well If you are able to have 75-80 I would think you could invite 90 with the knowledge that some guests won't be able to come.
    Perhaps then you can puit the other 20 people on a "b" list

    print up two sets of rsvp cards with a later date.

    I think broach both sets of parents and ask them each to find 10 people than can move to a separate list.

    HTH

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  • We stuck with just first cousins immediate family and friends we wanted to invite.  We finally decided on a place that we dont have to worry about the list as much because the other one was a max of 150 people - but I was still questioning how squished it would be. So for less stress we choose the place that was bigger but still going to try to restrict to a little over the 150 from the previous because of the crazy $s.
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