For today's Wedding Wednesday post, I wanted to talk a little bit about one of the biggest parts of a wedding (because without them, it would be an elopement)...THE GUESTS.
I have a VERY large family and lots of life-long friends that are local. Even some of my farthest relatives live 3-4 hours away, so I knew that M and I would have a large guest list at our wedding. M's family is not as big as mine but we both have lots of very close friends in the area.
So, when we made a first pass at the guest list, we came in over 230.
That is a LOT of people for my wedding budget and space. I knew we needed to pare down the list some but dang...who knew how hard THAT would be!?! I felt like I started having to qualify why people were ON the list so that I could figure out who could be trimmed from it. It's so weird thinking about people you know like that, but it's a reality.
I trimmed down my list some (because I have more guests on the list than M did) and ended even removing some family members. I made the decision to not invite all of my 60+ cousins' children. Does it make me feel bad? A little. Do I know that at the end of the day it will help me to stay in budget and less stressful? Absolutely. Besides, I'm not sure how many of them would have actually come anyway.
But, I will say that it's still kind of awkward to think about the family members that I didn't invite. Those people who know me from church that I didn't invite. Or those people I used to work with that, in the end, just didn't make the list.
Ultimately, the list we invited comes in right around 200...give or take a few. I don't expect all 200 of them to show up, but I do estimate having no less than 180 people.
Weeding out the guest list is a difficult task full of difficult decisions...and for someone who is indecisive, it's even worse. However, I feel confident that the people I DID invite are the ones that will stand behind Mark and I and support us and love us throughout our new life together.
And on a separate note.
Apparently, I offended someone by not including them on an invitation. This was a complete oversight as I didn't know this person resided in the location I sent the invite to. I would never have addressed my wedding invitation to just SOME of the people living in a house and not all of them. That's just rude...even though I can't remember the last time I saw or spoke to this person. However, I still inadvertently hurt someone's feelings by not including them.
So, instead of emailing me, sending me a message or relaying a message through someone else, that person chose to post something very hateful and mean on social media...directed at me. Instead of taking the high road, that person chose to act childish and immature. Instead of accepting that they weren't invited or even perhaps entertaining the idea that it was an honest mistake, they chose to embarrass and insult me.
Ultimately, this is all I will do to acknowledge the post. It was definitely hard to not respond to the post with any of the dozens of comments going through my mind when I read it. But instead, I choose to write out my reasoning, explain my mistake and convey my wish for this person to really think twice about posting hurtful things on social media, here on my blog. It does a lot more damage than you would know...not only to the person you intended to hurt, but to yourself as well.
Linking up!
Oh the joys of wedding planning. I was asked about 1 month before my wedding if my aunt (by marriage) could bring her Mom that I had never met because my little cousin was the ring bearer. I explained that the numbers had been locked in, tables had been planned out, etc. It was 7 years ago and I'm pretty sure she is still mad at me about it. Can't please everyone!
ReplyDeleteCool flow chart. Glad I made the list. :)
ReplyDeleteUgh. We had such a hard time narrowing down our list. I'm hoping only 1/2 of the people we invite show up. That's part of why we are doing a destination wedding. It is hard! I only say 1/2 because we are inviting a lot of Jeremy's family but we know that they won't be coming. They don't have the money to make the trip, so we will be having a separate get together in Indiana later this year.
ReplyDeleteAnd boo for someone taking to social media to out you. That isn't right.
Thanks for linking up!
Ugh...the guest list. It continues to be the bane of this whole process. MG has a TON more family (and friends) than I do....and we keep forgetting people. It's frustrating. He also keeps saying that there will be people who don't come....which is true, but you also have to be prepared for ALL of the people you invite to come. So far, we have not had nearly as many no's as I'd thought, and given we've only received about 1/3 of the responses...it makes me nervous.
ReplyDeleteAs for the person who was rude on social media....are you ending up inviting them? Because it sounds like they don't deserve it anyway now. That's just rude and childish.
Ugh....I wish I had this list to show some of our relatives when we did our guest list. Some of them thought we needed to invite everyone person that's ever had an interaction with anyone in our family for the last 27 years. It's tough though. We both have big families but there was no way we could invite all of our cousins and their kids and their kids' kids. This is definitely the one part I don't miss about wedding planning. It seems like you've got it figure out though!
ReplyDeletetough decisions, but as long as you and the mister are there, it will all work out. Don't even get me started on people who think social media is a place to post things like that!
ReplyDeleteOh wow, that person sounds awful! I'm so sorry you're dealing with that. I've had a really hard time cutting people from our huge guest list, too, and even told a couple of friends that they are the first to get an invite once some family members say no. It makes me feel awful!
ReplyDelete