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Wedding Etiquette Forum
Invite List - Help :)
Hi all,
My fiancé and I are creating our guest list and man, 100 people adds up quick! I'm just wondering general opinions on where to draw the lines. Family we are not concerned about but I suppose it's friends, co-workers and family friends.
Friends- I have some girlfriends I would like to invite who I used to work with or attend church with. I don't regularly keep in touch with them as I used to when we working together or i see them either at church, our common ground.! I'm not sure where to draw the line, they are friends I want to invite but not particularly as close with.
Church pals- I'm actively involved with my church but I'm feeling terrible about having to make cut offs with people. It's more so because we have reached our headcount and I'm just wondering how to address this when people express their excitement and yet they aren't invited.
Coworkers- my fiancé wants to invite some of his who I have never met. im not too comfy with it especially because they are in a relationship and so bam that's more people I don't know.
thoughts?? I guess at the end of the day it's about budget I wish that wasn't the case but it is
My fiancé and I are creating our guest list and man, 100 people adds up quick! I'm just wondering general opinions on where to draw the lines. Family we are not concerned about but I suppose it's friends, co-workers and family friends.
Friends- I have some girlfriends I would like to invite who I used to work with or attend church with. I don't regularly keep in touch with them as I used to when we working together or i see them either at church, our common ground.! I'm not sure where to draw the line, they are friends I want to invite but not particularly as close with.
Church pals- I'm actively involved with my church but I'm feeling terrible about having to make cut offs with people. It's more so because we have reached our headcount and I'm just wondering how to address this when people express their excitement and yet they aren't invited.
Coworkers- my fiancé wants to invite some of his who I have never met. im not too comfy with it especially because they are in a relationship and so bam that's more people I don't know.
thoughts?? I guess at the end of the day it's about budget I wish that wasn't the case but it is
Re: Invite List - Help :)
It doesn't matter if you have met SOs or not - all SOs have to be invited.
As for coworkers, just because you haven't met them doesn't mean they shouldn't come. I'm sure you have friends your fi hasn't met that that you want there.
Also, how have you reached your headcount? You first come up with your guest list, then figure out your budget, and then that dictates your event. Then you start to look at venues to hold your numbers etc. If it's cake and punch for 200 or a gourmet meal for 50, you should always have the guest list first.
I'll echo inviting in circles as the easiest way to cut numbers. Your innermost circles are your VIPs, then put in the circles of people you next most want there and so on. How far out do circles like co-workers and church friends fall? Nice to invite, but we can't really afford to? They get cut.
said make your list, and then go from there. It's much harder to stick with a random number you pick because it feels right.
Yes. This! ^
There are going to be quite a handful that FI and I don't know. Some, both of us do not know! If it means something to him, then you need to include them.
It's going to be hard for us to tell you who you should invite or who you should cut, because we don't know your relationships and dynamics, but I will tell you what helped me decide.
I first made a list of the VIPs; the people we absolutely wouldn't want to get married without them being there. We ran our plans by them to make sure things work for them. Then we made a list of everyone we really couldn't imagine not having there, a list of everyone we would like to invite if we had the room/budget/ability. We also asked our parents for similar lists. Then we compared our lists to our budget to see what we could afford depending on how many people we invited.
For example if we just invited our VIPs we could afford $XX per person, if we invited every person we wrote down we could afford $YY per person. Come up with your budget first, then the lists of people.
Once we found our venue & most vendors, we realized we had a little wiggle room, so we expanded our circle for local friends and added a handful more to our guest list. (NOT a b-list, that is rude! All of our invites went out at the same time)
We ended up inviting more than the imaginary number I had in my head when we started, mostly because our families alone almost exceeded my initial guess of how many guests we'd have! If your limit of 100 guests isn't set by your venue's codes and you want to invite more people, take a look at your budget and see where you can be flexible. If you haven't signed a contract yet, great! Make a list of your guests, then review it over a couple weeks. Share it with FI and your families to make sure no one is missing. THEN start looking at venues, etc.
My stance on co-workers, is that I would not invite them unless I am also friends with them. Even if you don't know them, if your FI hangs out with these people outside of work, I would try to include them (and their SOs) if it is important to him. If not, that can be a "rule" you use. Same goes with your church friends. Sounds like you haven't seen some of them for sometime.
We had a "rule" that if we had seen or talked to a person in a year, we would not invite them (there were some exceptions). It helped focus on "what is my relationship with this person NOW?".
Have you chosen a venue? What time of day is your wedding? Unless you are Catholic, you have a lot of choices.
Wedding = bridal couple, officiant, license, witnesses. That is all. You send printed wedding announcements to friends and family afterward the ceremony is over. No reception.
If you want guests, you will need paper invitations, a chair for every behind, a comfortable place for the ceremony and reception, and food and drink of some kind. (Maybe a garden wedding, with tea sandwiches on trays, cake and punch?) If you are religious, churches can be lovely, and they have fellowship rooms for simple receptions.
You want more? Add a wedding dress and veil, bridesmaids and groomsmen (the fewer, the more budget friendly), music, photography and maybe, flowers. Serving lunch would be nice.
If you want the ultimate, expensive $$$$ wedding, then you need a full dinner for all of your guests, alcohol, dancing, DJ, tuxedos for the men if it is to a formal evening wedding.
Any of the above plans make for a lovely wedding day. What is most important to you? Your guest list, or having a fancy dinner? You are the only ones who can plan your wedding. You decide where to make the cuts. My daughter decided that having more guests was most important to her, so she had a morning church wedding with an afternoon brunch reception. It was about half the cost of a dinner reception. She used Vistaprint invitations instead of the fancier ones that she liked. No DJ. No limo. No tuxedos. Mimosas and bloody marys instead of an open bar. (More people drank sodas because it was early afternoon.) She had 135 guests in a venue that could hold 250.
We will be happy to help you plan a lovely, appropriate wedding and reception. You need to be realistic about your plans, though, and decide what is most important to you. You cannot be rude to your guests by not inviting their wives, fiances, and significant others. Don't forget to figure that into your plans.
Do Not send a Save the Date to everyone! Just send them to your Must Have invites. If you send someone a STD, you must send them an invitation and things can change. People move, relationships change, new relationships are formed; do yourself a favor and don't lock yourself into inviting anyone. I was certainly glad that we only sent them to immediate family and VIP out of town guests because I wanted to send them to everyone I knew (before I found TK).
is 100 people the amount you can afford to host or the venue limit?
I didnt really plan my guest list the smart way but I did what worked for us. We had about 60 family members and VIP friends we must invite, those were the only ones that got StDs. Our 'includes everyone we know' guest list was over 250 people but we quickly trimmed that down to about 120. We chose a venue that could hold 180 with a wide range of catering options, the cheapest being BBQ at 15$/ person. So we started saving, hiring the vendors in order of priority, and cutting things we didn't think we needed. I ended up losing my job 2 months before the wedding but because we didn't lock our selves into inviting everyone we had ever met (and had been frugal with expenses along the way) we were fine, actually we were able to add salmon to the menu. There were definitely people that I thought I would be inviting when we first got engaged but when it was time to send invites the relationship had changed and there were other people I wanted to invite instead.
I don't think anyone regularly buys luxury meals for others, but rather a thought exercise that is essentially asking: 'Do I feel close enough to this person that I want to show my gratitude for this relationship by treating them vs are they nice enough and we get together because of circumstance (ie: we chat at work, we are friendly at church) but it would be strange if we did anything but split the bill. '
But, that being said, at a (meal time) wedding, one is essentially taking people out for meal. It is asking 'am I close enough that I would spend this level of hosting for these people one on one, taking the wedding out of it'.
If I had it my way I would be a millionaire and would invite everyone I ever loved to come celebrate with me! But, c'est la vie.
If you haven't already, you should figure out what the absolute max is you can afford to spend on your wedding, do some pricing of caterers (or talk with your venue's in-house caterer) and then make a decision on what the absolute ceiling is for your guest list based on what it would cost to have them there.
If you have time to spare (so to speak), consider setting your "must have" guest list of family and "can't get married without them" friends. See if relationships change between now & when you send out save-the-dates/invitations. Just don't promise anyone an invitation if you're not 100% sure you're inviting them.
If anyone asks you about your wedding plans, you say something like, "Oh, we are so excited, but we are having a smaller wedding, due to finances." Anybody who asks about being invited after that will look very rude. Most church people will say, "Oh, of course. We understand."
Most of the people at my wedding, I would have never taken out to a nice dinner and paid for their drinks one on one. Again, it's just not something I do, even if I'm close to a person. I think a wedding is a completely different situation out of the norm, and I am going to be willing to host people differently than I would for any other occasion.
Inviting in circles is usually the best.
Remember, no one should be expecting an invite. Even family. For the most part, people are very understanding about budgets and limiting guests.
That said, I do think the "would I have them over for a one-on-one meal" is a useful way of thinking of things.