Keep Your Wedding Guest List Under Control
Wedding planning
Your wedding guest list determines your wedding’s size and thus the budget, but the larger issue is ensuring that you share your wedding day with those who are closest to you. Even if you’re on a moderate wedding budget, you can still arrange your wedding details to enable you to have a larger guest list. Some couples prefer a smaller guest list to allow for a more intimate wedding.
In order to create your dream wedding plans, you must first establish your guest list, and take careful steps to ensure that your guest list does not balloon out of control. In the excitement of wedding planning, parents may verbally invite large numbers of their friends and colleagues, which can inflate your head count. Guests may wish to bring dates or their children, and if you allow these additions, your guest list can increase to an unmanageable size. So keep these tips in mind to keep control of your guest list:
· Ask parents to refrain from talking about the wedding with their friends until you have had a chance to work on your wedding plans, wedding budget and your initial guest list.
- Give both sets of parents a generous amount of allowed numbers of extra guests, if you’re paying for the majority of your wedding.
- Explain to parents that while you wish you could invite 3rd cousins and other extended family members, you wish to share your wedding day only with those you’re closest to. Extended family members understand when relatives cannot invite every branch of the family tree to a wedding.
- Be clear on wedding invitations if a couple is invited without their children. Write Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smith on the outer envelope and Mr. and Mrs. Smith on the inner envelope. That conveys that the couple’s children are not invited.
- Have wording ready for when guests ask to bring their children. “I’m sorry, but we have an extremely large family with many children, so we’ve had to make a non-breakable rule to keep this an adults-only reception.”
- Make it a rule that you’ll allow a +1 only for guests whose significant other you have met and socialized with, and for engaged, close-to-engaged, and very longtime couples.
- Don’t invite long-distance relatives and friends, thinking they will not attend. Many people wish to see family and friends, so they’re more often accepting wedding invitations and combining the trip with their vacation, to enjoy the celebration with loved ones at a wedding reception location known for its fine dining and spectacular views.
Set your RSVP date at least 8 weeks before the wedding, so that you can send out invitations to any additional friends or relatives after the first Regrets trickle in. If you have a minimum guest amount to meet, this is a proper way to control your guest list so that it fits your catering contract.
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau
