Guestlists? "A-list" and "B-list" and...

[cassiopeia]

oh, look, my brain just exploded.

Hi girls. FH and I and our families are starting to talk seriously about numbers, about who to invite and who we want to be there. More because we need to pick a site than because I need to get invitations out.

So... How do you do that?! Who do you invite? No on in my family had a traditional marriage (including my parents), so we have no clue. His family is HUGE and we're having the wedding where I'm from; orginally we had planned to have a small wedding on Cape Cod (where my family, and we will be, lives) because it is expensive, and then a huge party/reception in Tulsa including his extended families, all of our "not so close" friends. But now we are thinking instead that we want everyone we love to come to the wedding. My feeling is that most of our mutual friends live in Tulsa, there is a decent number of them, people who don't REALLY love us and want to be there are not going to fly to Cape Cod, get a hotel for the weekend, etc. So we should invite them, so they don't feel excluded. He (sensibly) pointed out that ups our number of invites by about 100.

We have various price options for the ceremony/reception site and I'm kind of thinking that I'd like to know the guestlist number before I pick one... if the wedding is going to be huge we would pick a much cheaper place and vice versa. Is this not how it's done? Should we pick a number and then decide who is included in it? Our families alone are about 70 people.

WAH. I am feeling a little overwhelmed. Did any of that make sense?

[StaceyMc]

Trust me, what you said makes sense.

We made a list of the most important people in our lives - family, very close friends, and called it "the list". I didn't feel the need to invite every single person that we knew. There were a ton of people I could have invited, but....I didn't see that it was necessary. Joe probably could have invited his whole neighborhood, but he just invited the most important people that were closest to him.

And really, at the end of the day, there were 78 people in attendence, and I really felt that it was the "just right" number. I got to talk to all of our guests and didn't feel overwhelmed by the amount of people there.

So, I say, make a giant list of every one that you could possibly invite, and then take a closer look at it. I would bet that there are quite a few people that are on the list "just because you went to their wedding", or that you haven't had contact with in a very long time, etc.

Good luck - this is one of the rough parts of planning.

[EarlyBird]

My guest list was the FIRST thing i did- for this reason- we thought we had 215 invites and we were going to do it a little more casual which i really didnt want- i want elegant all the way- But then doing the list- the max people we 180- AWESOME :) now i can put that within our budget and do what i need to do- I got my favors on sale on a whim (ebay) and if i didnt know my guest list, i wouldnt have been able to get them etc etc-
You must figure out your guest list before you pick a venue!!

Also- try to remember that if there is a group of friend without serious bfs- they can be each others dates and come as a group - no guests needed :)

Cut the list by saying anyone that you dont have their number in your cell phone shouldnt be invited- i did that - oddly enough- if they werent THAT important then then didnt need to share this day- its reserved for the closest people.
I come from a huge family and cutting them wasnt an option but is his family insistent on inviting everyone? Can you cut the people's kids to make it less people? if you google "ways to cut your guestlist" it will give you some ideas like that- cutting the kids- etc etc- everyone says but they are kids meals you dont pay the same- yes but after 3 or 4 kids you do.. soo it all adds up

[cassiopeia]

The hard part is getting him and his family (and my family) to give names/numbers to begin with. That is our project for the weekend (made more difficult by the fact that he and his family are living in Tulsa, I live in NYC and the wedding and my parents are on Cape Cod -- makes sitting down and discussing impossible).

Cutting kids is not an option; between the two of us we have three. Including our nieces and nephews there are 12 under the age of 14. I do like the idea of inviting people who are in our cell phones though, that makes sense. I have a feeling that wouldn't cut too many people on his list though.

Thanks ladies!

[frenchie]

I guess I'm not really one to give advice, LOL... Since I'm so confused myself right now...
But start by making a list of people you can't imagine not inviting. And then see what venue you can afford, and how many more people you can invite numbers-wise, and add them on. You can invite a few more people than your reception will hold because some people will decide not to come. (we'll probably send out 170-180 invites for 150 places in the church)

[EarlyBird]

what i did is kind of be a bit** about it- i told FH- "Listen i need your list and i want you to remember, this is not a frat party for free booze (he was ina frat in college- they turn everything into a drinking party even in their late 20s and early 30s)
He understood and we made a cap out- besides his groomsmen and my bridesmaid we were allowed 30 people between us- however we wanted split that up (him 10 me 30 or him 15 and me 15) we had to stick to it.
Believe it or not we came WAYYY under- we have 14 between us besides our gm and bm.
Then him and his mom decided they would stall on not giving me their list- so what i did was send out an email to both at work and say " I need the lists in 5 days- this is important to get the ball rolling" then i made a preliminary list of people i KNEW they would want to invite- immediate family, close friends etc and then sent it to them and said i have these people, if you want to add to it, go ahead, In 5 days this is the list if i dont get any more people"

I didnt say it that terrible, its been a while so i dont remember exactly. i was sugar sweet about it- but i had to do it or else they never would have done it.

[twu]

We are inviting our immediate families, a few best friends, and our favorite cousins. There are a lot of cousins that we like but who simply will not make the cut. Our wedding is probably going to be 40-50 people.

I feel uncomfortable in large crowds of people, so I wasn't about doing the big wedding.


I would decide if you want a big wedding with everyone there or a smaller, more intimate gathering and then work on your guest list. Make two or three versions for "intimate gathering," "expanded," and "everyone under the sun."

If you're competent in Excel, then it's a lifesaver for doing this! I'll attach my excel wedding list so you can see an example. Here is how ours works:


We listed the people we wanted to come from most important to least. There were a lot of times when we cut & pasted people around!
My list is on sheet 2. His is on sheet 1.
If one of the guests has a significant other or children, we list them in the columns next to their name. So we can't invite a family without inviting their children too.
On sheet 1 there is a table where we tally our numbers. The function we use is COUNTA(click&drag a box) and that counts how many people we have listed at the top of our lists. We just cut off the box wherever we thought was appropriate for how many people were coming.
The total column is just the SUM() function for our individual counts.Hope that made some sense!

[cassiopeia]

Hehehe, thanks.
I've got mine going in excel already too ;)
Will take a look at yours later when I have a sec. :)

[lizardbnorton]

I used excel also. I wanted a bigger event. I have 5 sheets. One for my family, one for Robert's family, one for my friends/coworkers, one for his friends/coworkers, and one for mutual people. I have those seperated into must invites and possible invites. As of right now we have 134 people on the guest list.

[frenchie]

I'm still working on a little web application so that my parents and his parents can work on the list, too :) So busy on making the web app that I haven't really seriously done the list yet, I just have a general idea of what it's going to add up to.

[miranda]

I just went and cut out all the kids who weren't immediate family and it cut my list down by 25!! Then I went through and cut people I haven't talked to in the last year and a half, and that took out another 25!! Then, I cut out guests unless they'd been dating at least a year, and that cut out another 20ish!! I'm so excited, because honestly, having the 250ish number staring at me every time I opened my Excel sheet was driving me crazy!!!

[Nekochanpurr]

Why didn't i think of that?! We keep writing down a list.. then losing it! haha, thanks for the idea.

[gennymac]

I am running into the same issue - we have 350 on our list right now including everyone's kids. And I signed a contract for the facility and gave an estimate for the reception of 100 - yeah - call me stupid.

So here are a couple of things.
1. make a list of everyone in the world you want to know about your wedding, both sides, doesn't matter how big, how many etc.
2. you can use a tool like http://www.expressocorp.com/products.html (found this through a committee I'm on for work) where you can upload a spreadsheet then invite people to share it (like the inlaws, outlawas, whomever) they can make edits, add people, put in addresses to save you time etc.
3. Give yourself a flat deadline (and everyone else) to get all names and addresses. DO NOT tell them they are being invited to the wedding so no feelings are hurt.
4. Sit down with your FH and do this, assign the following categories -
STDs, Wedding Invites, Reception Invites, and Announcements.
Anyone not being invited to the wedding gets a wedding announcement so they don't feel left out, but you invite only the people you really want to the wedding.

Keeps both sides happy, keeps your purse close to your heart, and you include everyone on the planning. I used the column headers right off the bat so no one who saw it got the idea that ALL GOD'S children were being invited.

Good luck - now I gotta go back and assign which names get which item !

Thanks to TWU my STDs will be going out this week !

Gen

[thefuturemrsrogers]

My FH didn't want any part of the list -- I made it with his mother and my mother. Ours keeps growing by tiny increments as I reconnect with old friends or remember that I have to send an "obligatory" invite to a relative who won't be able to make it anyway. We've counted our list this way: a person gets a 1 if you're pretty sure they're coming, a .5 if you really don't know, and a 0 if they're probably not coming. Our count is 85, even though there are about 150 people on the master list.