Besides the budget, your guest list is one of the most important parts of your wedding. It will determine everything from the feel of the wedding down to the type of wedding you can afford. I recommend putting together your guest list in tandem with your budget.
To put together our guest list, Mr. Bear and I first put together a list of ANYONE we could think of that we might want to invite to the wedding. In our estimates, we gave any singles a "plus one" as well. Proper etiquette dictates that anyone in a relationship must be invited with their significant other so we allocated spaces on our initial guest list in the event that someone might become "taken" in the year and a half that we were to be engaged.
Our initial list was right around 300 people. This included family, friends, work friends, family friends and guests of our parents (that we thought they might want to invite).
Our next step was to determine what size wedding we could actually afford. For us, food, alcohol and a band were the most important parts of the wedding and we wanted to be able to afford good food, an open bar and a band. Two of those three things are dependent upon your guest list, so we determined we wanted to be at a maximum of 180 invited guests.
Cutting people can become difficult, especially if you are in the beginning stages of planning and you intend to have a longer engagement. Just remember that this version of the guest list is there to serve as a guide for your purchases and likely will not be the finalized list. To make cutting potential guests from our guest list a bit easier, our total budget was split almost exactly in thirds between us, my parents and Mr. Bear's parents. We figured since everyone was paying the same amount we would divide allowed guests evenly among all parties. For us, this meant that each party was allowed to invite 60 people of their choosing. This could be family, friends, or the bum they met on the street, but each was only allowed 60. It was very difficult to stay within the 60 person limit, but that was what we could afford and it was the size of wedding we wanted, no larger. Additionally, our venue could only comfortably seat about 190 in the configuration we wanted.
After all sides turned in their lists, we had our nearly completed guest list long before any additional decision was made. There were a few swaps on both sides of the family, but for the most part, this was the finalized list. It made it very easy to prevent etiquette boo-boo's once we had our list.
Knowing who was invited and who wasn't prevented all parties from talking about the wedding in front of those who were not invited, preventing feelings of being snubbed.
Our guest list assisted in everything from chargers and tablecloths to wedding cake and how much paper needed to be ordered for save the dates, menus, programs, and invitations.
While the guest list was the hardest part of our wedding planning process, it was also vital because at the end of the day, we were surrounded by people we loved dearly on the day of our wedding!
Tips:
1. I highly recommend keeping your guest list in a spreadsheet. After we had our guest list spreadsheet, we were able to enter in the addresses, keep track of any gifts received, and track RSVPs. I used a format similar to this one that I found on Google:
2. Create a rough draft or at the very least have your maximum number defined BEFORE going any further in the planning. Your guest count is going to determine venues that will fit in your budget, as well as whether or not a venue will be able to properly accommodate the number of guests you plan to invite.
-Danielle
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