Guest List Advice

[lala2332]

Hi everyone,
I technically a LIW, but I''ve started trying to come up with a guest list. I figured that since its one of the first things that needs to be done and that way I can work on it in bits and pieces. I''m pretty sure my FMIL is doing this as well. The two of us are so excited about the upcoming engagement (the next 6-9 months).

Anyway, I was wondering if y''all had any advice about

1) organizing the guest list. Notecards? on-lline database? excell spreadsheet? or just good old fashion lists? whatever helped you would be great.
2)How did you handle "B" list invites? Did you even have a B-list? How did you draw the line?
3)Also what about the +guest? everyone, no one, only SO''s that you had met?

Just curious about all this since I know that you can''t pick a place until you have a number. Plus, I think having some sort of idea of how many I''m inviting will help with asking my parents for monetary help.
I think my ideal wedding size is 150, but I have no idea what that really means! Anyway, any advice about the guest list and size would be much appreciated!!!
Thanks!

 

[KimberlyH]

1. DH and I wrote a guest list together (paper and pencil) and then I transferred it to an excel spreadsheet.
2. We had no "B" list. We invited immediate family (siblings and their offspring, which meant my nephew, parents, grandparents), aunts and uncles, and close friends. I have a gazillion cousins and they were not invited, DH has no cousins.
3. Our "and guests" were anyone who wasn't married and over the age of 18.

 

[clop]

Hi lala,

1) we had paper lists (list from parents, fiance etc) that were transferred to excel
2) we had a second group. I ordered extra rsvp cards with a later date.
3) we limited +guests to people we knew well

Congrats on your engagement! Good Luck on compiling your list!

I''d suggest chatting with your parents, FILs, to see how many people they expect to invite as well. We ran into some issues when our ideal size was 50, but our parents expected to invite 80 others.

 

[jcrow]

i used the knot's online guest list helper. however, when it came time to send the list to the calligrapher, i had to move over all of that info to word. so, i used 2 methods and both had its pluses & minuses.

 

[aprilcait]

We did an Excel spreadsheet. We asked hubby''s parents to type up their guest list and my parents to type up theirs and email the lsts to us. My parents'' list was loooong (as was expected), so I asked them to note B list vs. A list guests. Then I combine the lists into two Excel spreadsheets (A list and B list), added the address for each guest next to him/her name and went from there.

Later, I used that Excel workbook to track RSVPs and meal requests. It was fabulous having everything all together and in an easy-to-share format.

 

[Lanie]

1. We used The Knot site. It''s really useful because it will tell you how many people, how many invitations (it breaks it into families), how many on your side, how many on his side, how many in bridal party, etc. Very very useful, and you can even do the advanced version of chicken or beef, addresses, etc...

2. I have NEVER understood the B list. We are inviting more than 300 people, and expecting about 220 or so. We won''t know who is coming until the RSVP date (about a month before the wedding) so I can''t imagine contacting people then and saying, "By the way...we have a wedding and..." So far we have a good idea of who is coming and who isn''t, but you never know. Maybe I have the whole B list thing misunderstood...so if someone liked it, tell me how you got around it!

3. Since our list is so big, we only did "and guest" if they were married to that person, or if it is a known fact that they are dating. I don''t want my random cousin showing up with some girl he asked from his work.

Lala, the bigger issue I found with invites is the children. You need to start talking about how you will deal with that, because it is a big sticky subject, so get that point across quick before people start assuming. We''re inviting family and extended family kids. There are too many if we do friends kids. It may not seem like 15 dollars per kid is a lot, but it starts adding up...trust me.

 

[Sabine]

We used excel. If you do this, I would suggest typing the name column as last name, first name so that you can organize it alphabetically by last name once you have it compiled. We did not have a B list. For the + guests, we didn''t really have a rule. I think we gave a guest to each of our bridal party, plus our friends that we knew had SO''s, plus anyone engaged or married.

 

[Haven]

Oh lala, how exciting! What a great time, I can't wait to see your engagement pictures (when it happens)!

1) We used Excel to organize our guest list (and EVERYTHING else about the wedding, too!) When we were first creating the list we had it in four different worksheets: a) His family and family friends, b) His friends, c) My family and family friends, d) My friends

ETA: Since you're getting a head start, you should start filling in the other necessary info about your guests, too. Getting addresses and correct name spellings took us a very long time! Here are the columns we created in our guest spreadsheet so we could keep an ongoing count, and the names and addresses would be ready to be calligraphied on to our envelopes:
- Outer Envelope Names (Mr. and Mrs. James Kevin Morrison)
- Inner Envelope Names (James and Lucy Morrison, or Mr. and Mrs. James Morrison, however informal you choose to be)
- # Adults
- # kids
- # Yes (you don't need to add this until you send out the invites)
- # No (you don't need to add this until you send out the invites)
- Street address
- City
- State
- Zip
If you have all of this done before you're even engaged you will be so far ahead of the game, trust me!


2) We did not have a "B" list. I won't say much about it, but if people don't make the "A" list I don't see why you would invite them. We did have a list of people we did not want to invite to the actual wedding, but to whom we sent wedding announcements. This included colleagues, distant relatives, and other people with whom we aren't very close, but wanted to tell personally about our marriage.

3) We only invited a few "and guests" because I personally don't like the idea of allowing people to bring whomever they please to an event (strangers at a wedding is a bizarre thing). Our three "and guest" invites were for dear friends who are not married (but in their late 20s/early 30s), and would be seated at a table with four other couples. We didn't want him to feel uncomfortable.

We actually had exactly 150 guests attend our wedding, and it was a great size. It was still a bit too many people to make the rounds and spend a bit of quality time speaking with each and every guest, which I regret a little bit. However, I think any more would have been too large for me.

Good luck!

 

[ladyciel]

The best way to manage your list, that I know of, is www.weddingwire.com. I''ve used it for months now, and it''s FANTASTIC. And, better yet, FREE.

 

[lucy.lucy.80]

Date: 7/28/2008 11:42:09 AM
Author: Lanie
1. We used The Knot site. It''s really useful because it will tell you how many people, how many invitations (it breaks it into families), how many on your side, how many on his side, how many in bridal party, etc. Very very useful, and you can even do the advanced version of chicken or beef, addresses, etc...

2. I have NEVER understood the B list. We are inviting more than 300 people, and expecting about 220 or so. We won''t know who is coming until the RSVP date (about a month before the wedding) so I can''t imagine contacting people then and saying, ''By the way...we have a wedding and...'' So far we have a good idea of who is coming and who isn''t, but you never know. Maybe I have the whole B list thing misunderstood...so if someone liked it, tell me how you got around it!

3. Since our list is so big, we only did ''and guest'' if they were married to that person, or if it is a known fact that they are dating. I don''t want my random cousin showing up with some girl he asked from his work.

Lala, the bigger issue I found with invites is the children. You need to start talking about how you will deal with that, because it is a big sticky subject, so get that point across quick before people start assuming. We''re inviting family and extended family kids. There are too many if we do friends kids. It may not seem like 15 dollars per kid is a lot, but it starts adding up...trust me.

I dont know that we are doing the standard "A" list and "B" list, but its a modified version. Our Group#1 invites to family and family friends with an earlier RSVP date and then Group#2 invites to FI & I friends with a RSVP date 1 month prior to wedding day. It is helpful if you are close to the minimum or maximum of the room capacity and a better way to guage who will be coming without having those last minute invites.

We used an excel spread sheet for guest list and it has been very helpful and easy to modify as needed.

 

[lala2332]

Thank you so much for all your advice!

My BF thinks I''m crazy for working on this already but I feel like at least making a huge list of everyone and then start pairing it down now, when we have no other wedding planning stress will just make things easier.
We are in law school together, so handling all of our classmates can get tricky, esp. since we will still be in law school when the engagement happens, so everyone will know about it.


Thanks!!!

 

[brazen_irish_hussy]

Another vote for excel. My FI does not have MS Office, so he uses open office, which is free and they work together just fine. We each have a spreadsheet for our side and a basic master list in word.

We did not have a B list, although there were people we were much closer to at the time we first made the list than we are now, so they are no longer invited (we didn''t send out STDs, so it wasn''t like we told them they could come and then revoked it) and added people we have gotten closer to in the intervening period, but that''s as close as we got.

We are not doing "and guest". Our wedding is smaller, 75-100, so we know who has a serious SO and who does not, so we only invited them. The rule for us was simply that if we knew them and thought they would still be together at the time of the wedding the SO could come, but a lot weren''t engaged or married.

I think it depends on what kind of wedding you have in mind as well. We are having no real dancing, no DJ, limited alcohol so the wedding we were looking for is not the party type inviting all our friends and whomever they feel like bringing, but some people do want that kind of wedding, more of a party, and that''s fine

 

[violet02]

I''m using www.wedshare.com to organize my guest list, correspondences, seating chart, budget etc. It works pretty well, I can do email blasts through it as well to all the guests.

 

[zoebartlett]

Date: 7/28/2008 10:27:58 AM
Author:lala2332
Hi everyone,
I technically a LIW, but I''ve started trying to come up with a guest list. I figured that since its one of the first things that needs to be done and that way I can work on it in bits and pieces. I''m pretty sure my FMIL is doing this as well. The two of us are so excited about the upcoming engagement (the next 6-9 months).

Anyway, I was wondering if y''all had any advice about

1) organizing the guest list. Notecards? on-lline database? excell spreadsheet? or just good old fashion lists? whatever helped you would be great.
2)How did you handle ''B'' list invites? Did you even have a B-list? How did you draw the line?
3)Also what about the +guest? everyone, no one, only SO''s that you had met?

Just curious about all this since I know that you can''t pick a place until you have a number. Plus, I think having some sort of idea of how many I''m inviting will help with asking my parents for monetary help.
I think my ideal wedding size is 150, but I have no idea what that really means! Anyway, any advice about the guest list and size would be much appreciated!!!
Thanks!

I haven''t read the thread yet so I might repeat others'' ideas, but here''s what we did:

1. My FI (oops, I mean husband) and I wrote out our list and my parents did too. His parents eventually did as well, although at first, they kept telling us that they''d let my husband take care of that. Anyway, I know some people have assigned a certain number of people for themselves and their parents. We didn''t do that. Our list doubled (my husband and I originally had 80 guests on our list, but then our parents [mostly mine] kept adding) to it.) We did our list in Excel.

2. We didn''t have a B list, or at least, we didn''t think of it that way. There were additions made to the list over time, and there were even a few very last minute additions (like, 2 days before our wedding). I wouldn''t call the additional people part of a B list, but maybe others would.

3. I''m 34 and my husband is 36 -- we''re the last of our friends to get married. The "+1" issue wasn''t too much of an issue for us. I did have one friend write in +1 on her reply card, and he came to the wedding, and a relative of my husband is separated from her husband and she ended up bringing a friend instead.

We did need to decide what to do about babies and children. It was super important to me to have children included, but if we had invited all of our friends'' children, we would have had a HUGE wedding. My parents weren''t all that psyched about paying for them, so we decided to invite only children of family members. We have one friend who brought her young baby (she''s nursing) but they left their two year old at home with a sitter.

 

[violet02]

2. For the B-list we sent out a-list invites a bit early... RSVP for A list is 8/25 for a 10/4 wedding. Then B-list will get invites sent out 8/26 and will have a couple of weeks to RSVP.
3. For +guests we were pretty strict. Only long term relationships were allowed, if a good friend got a new steady gf two months before and we had room then maybe (we just did this for the best man). But when invited if they were single or not serious we didn't give them a +1. No one got an 'and guest' invitation from us. We knew the names of everyone, including SO's we'd never met.

My original guest list was 110... the venue we picked could only accomodate 100 so I lowered it. Then budget came into play and I lowered it to 80. Figuring out how much you can spend can impact how many guests you can have. We ballparked what we needed, got some monetary help from both sets of parents but are going to foot half the bill ourselves at this point due to overages. We'd already planned on putting money in since their contributions were never going to cover all of it.

 

[lala2332]

thanks so much for the help.

Great advice!!!!

Spreadsheet here I come....haha

 

[fieryred33143]

I''m glad you posted this lala because I''m having guest list drama as well and any advice is helpful LOL

We aren''t having issues with dates because there are only really 5 or 6 people that are single so an extra 5 to 6 people is not a big deal. We''re struggling now with OOT guests AND children. Kids make up about 20% of the list so eliminating them would be a huge help budget wise.

I like all the comments on the "and guest" issues. We were considering allowing everyone to bring a date but I may just use some of the ideas here too.

Thanks again Lala LOL