Yes, that is the question surrounding so many of my brides right now. The dreaded guest list and every single family member's supposed need to chime in with who should be on it. I have a bride getting married this weekend who literally has no aunts and uncles from one side of the family attending the wedding because children were not invited. The only reason children were not invited to this particular wedding was because there would have been over 100 of them and they simply would not have fit into the Wisconsin Club where they had reserved and fallen in love with as their reception venue. Alas....the wedding will go on and she is at the point of planning where all she can do is throw her hands in the air and move forward with their special day. But this family is supposedly not attending out of spite. Babysitters were not the problem, nor was money or anything else that they can think of .
It did get me thinking though....why is this so often the culprit of family feuds, arguements between the couple, and just plain old stress for the bride? WHY!?! I was telling my sales team today at work that I am so fortunate that for my own wedding, even though my parents paid for quite a bit of it, they completely understood when we firmly told both sets of parents that no one was going to be invited unless the bride or groom (you know...the people this day is actually about!) knew them. That meant some random friends of parents were thrown off the list. The best part....they were OK with it! My parents realized this day was not about them, not about showing off to their friends and business associates and clients. This was about the uniting of two people. I seriously loved my mom through the planning process and this was a big reason why.
My sales manager is going through Guest List Hell right now. They are still a good 17 months away from the Big Day, but already the drama has ensued about who to invite, the pros/cons of a child-less wedding reception and on and on. I feel bad for her. It's hard for me to fully understand since I'm kind of a tough cookie and my response was "You and Kris are paying for the majority of this wedding. YOU invite who YOU want to invite." I don't think I'm a very nice person sometimes; perhaps wedding drama has hardened me. So be it.
So the question remains...do you love 'em.......or leave 'em of the guest list? To each their own of course. If it's a budget thing, just keep in mind that your guest list will directly correlate with the amount of money your wedding costs. If it's a space thing and you think you'll be ok if you invite 400 people to your 200 person maximum capacity venue, think again. And if it's a kid thing....well, I better not go there. :)
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Oh, and for those of you that are wondering about the WI Bridezilla I was trying to track down. Thanks to Sara and Molly and their handy detective work, I found her! But don't get too excited because after an email and a MySpace message that nicely invited her to be interviewed for this blog, I haven't heard back. Bummer to say the least.
2 comments:
I was a rare bride in this situation, and am proud to brag about it.
My hubby and I were very fortunate in two ways:
1. My parents apparently had a "wedding fund" I didn't know about growing up. Awesome.
2. Hubby's parents said they didn't care what tradition stated, they were paying half of everything (aside from the dress, hair and things like that).
We asked for guest lists. The initial result? I kid you not - after adding both parents' lists as well as our friends, there were EXACTLY 100 invited from each side. I fell out of my chair.
Now granted, some people were added that were initially forgotten, but it was still pretty darn close. I thank them from the bottom of my heart. No guest list drama for this newlywed :)
I wish there was an easy way to just ask my family all a year in advance while I'm trying to pick a location how many will actually be able to make it. I think our list is about 160 invited, but the reality is that 85-90 will make it because literally EVERYONE but Corey and I will be OOTers.
Unfortunately I can't "assume" that they won't make it.
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