Making Your Wedding Guest List

Creating your wedding guest list is often one of the first tasks you tackle as you plan your wedding.

Compiling a guest list can get complicated quickly, though. You and your soon-to-be spouse might suddenly realize that you know a lot more people than you thought. Yet, you have to keep catering and venue costs within a reasonable budget. Still, you don’t want to offend anyone that might not make the invitation list.

This is a social dilemma that many couples have to face before their wedding. This article seeks to help you answer the difficult questions surrounding creating wedding quest lists by providing tips that are practical and easy to follow. After all, it's not like planning a wedding should be any more stressful than it already is, right?

Tips for Making Your Wedding Guest List

If you're finding it difficult to create a perfect guest list, here are a few pointers to help you make better decisions.

1. Use a Collaborative Tool

Curating a guest list can be difficult, especially if one or both sets of parents are involved in the planning or are financially contributing. When this is the case there can be a lot of pressure to please all the parties involved. The best way to handle such a situation is to prioritize communication and collaboration.

Tools like The Knot’s list planner make this process much easier by giving both halves of the couple the ability to add/remove names from the guest list. You can also manage RSVPs, guest information, and menu preferences from the list.

2. Divide the List Among the Stakeholders

To avoid tension and get everyone on the same page, you and your partner must be specific about your goals and expectations. Start by determining the total number of guests, then divide it among yourself, your parents, and your future in-laws.

Traditionally, the couple’s guests combined make half of the guest list, and each pair of parents gets a quarter. So, if you're inviting 200 people, you'll have 100 guests, your parents will have 50, and your fiancé's parents will have 50. However, the least stressful method is to divide the list into three parts and distribute it equally.

3. Set Realistic Numbers

We get it. You don’t want to be doing arithmetic and economics just to decide who is on your wedding guest list! But your guest list is one statistic you can’t avoid if you want to have a stress-free wedding party.

You should consider your budget and the size of the wedding venue. You also have to consider whatever guest-list distribution agreement you’ve made with your parents and in-laws.

Many people advise over-inviting because 10-20 percent of your guests may decline. But unless your venue size and budget are flexible, this can be a risky game to play. Each guest adds to the number of dishes, favors, chair rentals, and cake you'll need from your caterer.

If you invite more people than your venue can contain, you'll be holding your breath every time you open an RSVP. It's much smarter to be cautious with your estimate. If you find that you have more space in the venue or more room in your budget, you can add guests later on.

As for plus-ones, set a policy from the onset to prevent potential creep on your guest count limit. Make a firm rule that you will share with your guests so they’re on the same page as you. For example, you may choose not to extend invitations to significant others that you have not met before. You may also have to give a plus one to anyone coming who won't know anyone else so they won’t be uncomfortable during your celebrations. In fact, that’s recommended.

4. The ‘must haves’ and ‘maybe-haves’

This tip may seem cruel, but it’s honestly the most realistic way to approach things. You should create a tiered list of guests according to their importance to the wedding. Let’s look more closely at four of those tiers, from the most important invitees to the “eh, maybe’s.”

The A-List: The Must-Haves

The first tier consists of your A-list guests, the ones that absolutely have to be there. These would be your closest family (parents, siblings, children) and dear friends. For some couples this might add up to 10 people, for others, this might be 70. The best way to figure out your A-list guests is to sit down with your other half and ask yourselves, "If we were getting married tomorrow, who are the first people we would call?"

The B-List: The Would-Love-To-Haves

These are the people you'd like to spend your wedding day with, but it won't ruin your day if they suddenly canceled.

The B-List would be your extended family members (grandparents, nieces and nephews, aunties and uncles) and your wider circle of friends (your high school bestie, favorite teacher, etc).

The C-List: The Would-Love-To-Have-But...

This is where things start to get tricky. The C-List are people you'd really like to see at your wedding or that you'd be hard-pressed not to invite. However, when it comes to budgetary constraints, venue size, or simply the distance of your wedding location, you will have to make some hard choices. For example, if you plan to have a cozy destination wedding, you may not be able to invite elderly grandparents/ loved ones if they can’t travel.

The D-List: The Obligations

The D-list, ah, the D-list. Depending on the type of wedding you're having, this group of potential guests may or may not make the cut. If your parents are paying for your wedding, for example, they have the right to invite some guests. Also, if you are having a church service, it is customary to invite the priest to the meal.

However, if you feel obligated to invite your boss, friends of friends who invited you to their wedding, or your entire high school volleyball squad, you should probably put the brakes on. If you have to cut these people off your wedding guest list, don’t feel bad. We’ve all been on someone’s D-list at some point in our lives. Just focus more on the people that are important to you, and less on whether your high school baseball coach is upset that he didn’t get an invite to your wedding.

Make the People Count

In the end, the guests you invite to your wedding are entirely up to you, so your A-D list can differ significantly from ours. You may want to have a large number of children at your wedding, or you may want to keep your guest list as limited as possible. The only real rule is that you invite only the people you want, and you are not obligated to invite anybody you don't want.

Proper guest list preparation ensures that your special day remains on budget and prevents any last-minute surprises. This way, you get more time to focus on the more enjoyable wedding details, like shopping for the dress of your dreams at Afarose.