Preparing the Wedding Guest List
Preparing the wedding guest list got you down? Having a hard time pruning the list without offending anyone and still staying within your budget? The tips below will help you better manage your wedding guest list.
The Wedding Guest List: How to Keep It Short and to Get Everyone to Live With It
Most couples are in their mid-twenties these days when they are planning their wedding. That typically means that they are already earning their own incomes and often paying for much of their wedding on their own. Dad and mom are off the hook. That may sound bad, but there is a silver lining in those clouds. Back in the time when the parents paid for most everything to do with the wedding, they had more control on the when, where and who in the wedding. Now with the couple paying the bills, they have the final say.
You Pay, You Decide
That certainly is true when it comes to the guest list. If you are paying for the wedding reception yourself, it is really up to you who and how many you want to invite. One of the key ways that couples are saving money on their weddings now is to have a shorter wedding guest list. You don’t have to invite all those people that your folks know but you don’t. You can just invite the people that mean the most to you.
This is not to say that it is an easy thing to have a short list of invited guests to your wedding. Cutting people out can cause some hurt feelings. Will those family members, co-workers or even fringe friends be upset that they didn’t get invited? Maybe so. All you can do is to explain the best you can the reason. Say that you simply wanted a smaller wedding. Or if it is true and you aren’t too proud, tell them you couldn’t afford a larger wedding with one to two hundred guests.
Hopefully, they will understand and not feel slighted. There’s no guarantee and some may not be satisfied with your explanation. But again, you are paying for it, so you get to make the decisions. Others should be able to live with what you decide.
Questions to Ask
If you are ready to start making your list, here are some questions you might ask yourself as you do. One, do you have to extend an invitation to co-workers? Two, what about children or significant others? Some couples have learned the hard way that they have to be careful in the wording of the invitation.
If you send the wedding invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Somebody, then they may bring the kids and mother who is living with them. It’s sometimes best to specify exactly who you are inviting and even include a reservation for say two people, or however many, in the invitation. Three, and this rule is often used by couples in deciding who to invite to their wedding, have we even talked to this person over the past twelve months?
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