Planning Your Guest List

If you already have a space picked out where you’ll have your wedding and your reception, you’ll need to build your list based on the occupancy available in both locations. If you’ve got a big list of people but your church is small, think about possibly inviting some guests to just the reception. The smart thing to do is to plan out your guest list before picking a space to avoid any of these mishaps.

Another thing to think about is the budget. If you’ll be having a dinner, you’ll need to be sure that you can cover each guest. A friend of mine avoided this by offering appetizers while the guests waited on the Bride and Groom (they were taking pictures) then once they arrived, opened a buffet of mostly finger foods. She met the minimum food amount for the venue and served a ’semi-meal’ at the same time… but to the guests, it was good food!

One more thing is don’t forget to include your parents in the process of inviting guests. Especially if they’re footing the bill. Split the amount you can have into thirds, one third goes to the Bride to invite whom she wishes, one third to the Groom for all his chums, and one third to the parents. (Split that number in half and give each side of the family an exact number of people they can invite). Also, be sure to take into consideration if you’re going to allow “plus one’s”.

The guest list should be done as soon as possible to be able to give a head count to the caterer and to the cake maker. If you’re going to send out RSVP cards, be sure you do so in plenty of time to get them back before these final head counts are due.