Compiling your Wedding Guest List
The number of people you invite is obviously one of the biggest factors in determining the cost of your wedding. The hardest choice is usually between friends, family and, if your career is important to you, your colleagues. Here are some factors you might want to take into account:
- Make a list of the people you really care about - the ones you see, or at least talk to, on a daily or weekly basis.
- Add to the list the people who have been important to you in the past - people who played a part in your life when you were younger.
- What about the people you work with every day? Do you count them all as friends or are you thinking of inviting them because it's 'expected'?
- Then there are the people who are contributing towards the cost of the wedding. They may feel they are entitled to have a say in whom you invite.
- If you and your partner have families of different sizes, does the one with the smaller family feel entitled to ask some more distant relatives just to even up the guest list?
- Do you mostly share mutual friends or are you both still a part of separate social groups?
- Who will you need to support you in the future as you move into a different phase of your life as part of a pair?
This list can help you sort out your guest list, with due regard to both economics and emotions. This is what you do. You both need to read through these points and, when you've given each one due consideration, you'll find it much easier to make separate personal lists of the people who really matter. Get together and compare your lists. Talk through your differences.
If you're still faced with too many people and too little money or too little space, you can give yourselves a trial run in matrimonial decision-making:
- Do you hire a larger but cheaper venue?
- Do you go for a cheaper catering option?
- Do you restrict the guest list mostly to family or mostly to friends?
- Who will be offended and why does it matter?
- Are you going to insist that each of you invites the same number of people?
- Are you tempted to give up and get married abroad - just the two of you?
This is always an interesting exercise because it's based on your values about people. It doesn't matter what your values are, but if you share them with your prospective partner you will find it relatively easy to sort out your guest list together.
