havernell
Brilliant_Rock
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2006
- Messages
- 571
Hi all,
My fiance and I are starting to talk to our families about the final guest list for our wedding. I REALLY want to come up with a good strategy in advance regarding how to approach this task in a way that minimizes the stress that so many couples and families face when deciding who gets invited and who does not (and that also heads off the possibility of our families coming to us later on wanting to add "just x more people"). Therefore, I want to ask you wise ladies what you have done/ found works well to handle this delicate issue.
The details (feel free to skim): The maximum number that our church seats is 180 people, so that's the most we can accommodate (but, at the same time, we don't NEED to fill all 180 seats). So, we need to devise a way to keep the total number of invited guest below 200 while ensuring that random people aren't just invited "because there is space" and making sure that is still FAIR for all parties involved. (As an aside: when we were looking at venues my fiance and I did draw up a preliminary guest list and ran them by our parents, so we knew around 200 was doable but might mean making some cuts to everyone's "dream guest list"). Also, I should add that my parents (or at least Mom) feel pretty strongly (rightly or wrongly) that since they are paying the bulk of the wedding expenses that "our side" should at least have a roughly equal number of guests as my FIs side (i.e. FIs parents shouldn't invite 75 people while my parents only invite 40).
I've read some tips on how to make the drawing-up-the-guest-list as painless a process as possible and fair for all parties involved, but in my eyes each of these tips have certain downfalls themselves. For example, here are some tips I've come across and what I see as the problem(s) with them:
Tip 1: The total number of guests is divided by three and the bride's parents get to invite 1/3, the groom's parents get to invited 1/3 and the couple gets to invite 1/3 (or however you want to divide it- maybe 40/40/20). In our case 1/3 of 200 is 66.
Problem: Say (totally hypothetically) the groom comes from a large extended family. The 66 invites alloted to the groom's parents will then, by necessity, be filled with family leaving little if no room for close friends/dear co-workers, etc... who would be invited in an ideal world. Say the bride's extended family is quite small and even after inviting close friends, the bride's family still has some of the 66 invites left and thus start inviting random business associates, the people down the street, and the bride's third grade teacher just to reach 66. While the equal numbers thing is "fair" on the surface, it's not really fair that the bride's father's random business associate is invited when one of the groom's mother's close friends is squeezed off the list.
Tip 2: Set parameters that both sides must abide by in terms of "categories" of guests who are/are not invited. For example, parents' cousins can be invited but the children of those cousins are not. Or close family friends are a go but co-workers are out.
Problem: These parameters assume that all relationships are equal (i.e. I feel the same way about my second cousin as my FI feels about his). Unfortunately this is not the case. Maybe the groom's mom is in a career that is very "political" and feels she needs to invite co-workers for career reasons while the bride's Dad could care less if his business associates are there. Also, with this strategy, the person with the smaller family may have way fewer guests because they have a lot less people in the category of "extended family" on their side to invite.
Anyhow, this is getting to be a really long post (sorry that I get into details so much!) Bottom line is I'm struggling to find a way that we can get the guest list to the target number that is fair for everyone while also ensuring that random people aren't invited just because there is space for them (both because we'd like to the wedding to have a certain level of intimacy and because of cost concerns). SO, for you ladies who have done the guest list waltz already, any good suggestions for how to handle it?? I'd love to hear them!
My fiance and I are starting to talk to our families about the final guest list for our wedding. I REALLY want to come up with a good strategy in advance regarding how to approach this task in a way that minimizes the stress that so many couples and families face when deciding who gets invited and who does not (and that also heads off the possibility of our families coming to us later on wanting to add "just x more people"). Therefore, I want to ask you wise ladies what you have done/ found works well to handle this delicate issue.
The details (feel free to skim): The maximum number that our church seats is 180 people, so that's the most we can accommodate (but, at the same time, we don't NEED to fill all 180 seats). So, we need to devise a way to keep the total number of invited guest below 200 while ensuring that random people aren't just invited "because there is space" and making sure that is still FAIR for all parties involved. (As an aside: when we were looking at venues my fiance and I did draw up a preliminary guest list and ran them by our parents, so we knew around 200 was doable but might mean making some cuts to everyone's "dream guest list"). Also, I should add that my parents (or at least Mom) feel pretty strongly (rightly or wrongly) that since they are paying the bulk of the wedding expenses that "our side" should at least have a roughly equal number of guests as my FIs side (i.e. FIs parents shouldn't invite 75 people while my parents only invite 40).
I've read some tips on how to make the drawing-up-the-guest-list as painless a process as possible and fair for all parties involved, but in my eyes each of these tips have certain downfalls themselves. For example, here are some tips I've come across and what I see as the problem(s) with them:
Tip 1: The total number of guests is divided by three and the bride's parents get to invite 1/3, the groom's parents get to invited 1/3 and the couple gets to invite 1/3 (or however you want to divide it- maybe 40/40/20). In our case 1/3 of 200 is 66.
Problem: Say (totally hypothetically) the groom comes from a large extended family. The 66 invites alloted to the groom's parents will then, by necessity, be filled with family leaving little if no room for close friends/dear co-workers, etc... who would be invited in an ideal world. Say the bride's extended family is quite small and even after inviting close friends, the bride's family still has some of the 66 invites left and thus start inviting random business associates, the people down the street, and the bride's third grade teacher just to reach 66. While the equal numbers thing is "fair" on the surface, it's not really fair that the bride's father's random business associate is invited when one of the groom's mother's close friends is squeezed off the list.
Tip 2: Set parameters that both sides must abide by in terms of "categories" of guests who are/are not invited. For example, parents' cousins can be invited but the children of those cousins are not. Or close family friends are a go but co-workers are out.
Problem: These parameters assume that all relationships are equal (i.e. I feel the same way about my second cousin as my FI feels about his). Unfortunately this is not the case. Maybe the groom's mom is in a career that is very "political" and feels she needs to invite co-workers for career reasons while the bride's Dad could care less if his business associates are there. Also, with this strategy, the person with the smaller family may have way fewer guests because they have a lot less people in the category of "extended family" on their side to invite.
Anyhow, this is getting to be a really long post (sorry that I get into details so much!) Bottom line is I'm struggling to find a way that we can get the guest list to the target number that is fair for everyone while also ensuring that random people aren't invited just because there is space for them (both because we'd like to the wedding to have a certain level of intimacy and because of cost concerns). SO, for you ladies who have done the guest list waltz already, any good suggestions for how to handle it?? I'd love to hear them!
300x240.png)