Goin’ To The Chapel: Revamping Your Wedding Guest List

During yesterday’s installment of our Goin’ to the Chapel series, freelance designer Molly McDonald shared tips on how to stay within your wedding budget in order to help you stay stress-free while planning your wedding.

Today, Molly tackles the issue of the wedding guest list.

Who do you invite? Everyone from your best friend to your old high school cheerleading squad to your mother’s fifth cousin twice removed? Wouldn’t that be expensive? Or do you narrow it down, including only your closest friends and relatives? In that case, what if someone’s feelings get hurt?

Yes, I imagine making a guest list for a wedding could be rather stressful.

So read on to find out how Molly constructed her own wedding invitation list, and why she thinks her tips will help you create your own.

3 Steps to Creating Your Wedding Guest List

At first I wanted to invite everyone I knew to the wedding, until I realized how much that would cost. Below are the steps I followed to finalize my list:

1. Collect the list of guests from both sets of parents. Calculate those, plus both of your parties, and their guests. You’ll be surprised on the total.
2. Make two separate lists: “Bride’s Hopeful Guests” and “Groom’s Hopeful Guests.” Count this up, and don’t forget to account for their guests, if you’ve decided to do let them bring one.
3. Figure out how much it would cost to host all of these people. If it is out of your budget, you can downsize, making sure both give and take on who to invite.

Having trouble narrowing the list? This is what I did:

I only invited those who are close to me now, or have been really close to in the past but have simply lost everyday communication with because life gets so hectic! I’ve made a lot of friends in college, but you better believe I’m not inviting everyone in my cell phone! Invite those who mean the most to you now and will long-term.

Later, if someone says, “I haven’t gotten my invitation yet” and you don’t plan on inviting them, just say, “I’m really sorry, we had to cut the guest list short due to limited space. It’s only family and some long-time family friends now.” You can still invite them to the engagement party to celebrate with them, but as for the wedding, don’t feel obligated. They’ll understand. They’d rather you tell them in advance then to find out after the wedding and be offended.

Tomorrow, we’ll tackle those adorable little wedding guests that aren’t always invited to the formal ceremony: Children.

Molly McDonald is a freelance designer helping people get patents on their concepts while also patenting her own. Medical products are her personal favorites because she finds them most rewarding. Molly graduated with a Bachelor’s of Industrial Design with a minor in business and, when she’s not designing and patenting, she’s enjoying photography and studio art! For more, visit Molly McDonald Design.

Image source and credit.

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