When you are planning a wedding, there are whole lists of things to do. This is the biggest day of both your lives, and it has to be special – very special.
Quite a number of people today will have a small, intimate wedding with a limited number of guests. Indeed, while we have had Covid, for some couples that has been the only recourse. Others, meanwhile, have put off their wedding until it becomes possible to have the big day – and by that we mean big in the sense of the number of people invited. Indian weddings, in particular, are usually massive affairs, and it is not unusual to see an Indian wedding with 500 guests or more invited.
Indeed, Indian weddings are such big affairs that many parents will open a savings account upon the birth of a daughter in order to save up for that day, which may be 20 or 25 years down the line.
However, for many couples, thinking of having a wedding of that sort of size is simply not practical. What that means is that you have to limit the number of guests at your wedding, and if that means not inviting your second cousin twice removed – whom you may never have met – then so be it. There is a limit to how many people you can invite in most cases.
You may also be limited by the size of your venue. If you have decided upon a certain venue that you wish for your wedding, then you will also be limited by the number of people that venue can hold. In most cases you will want to hire a company for wedding decorations services to make the venue look like magic, and that is, of course, another expense to add to your overall budget and may be another good reason for limiting the number of guests.
No doubt you may have some idea of whom you wish to invite to your wedding, but that will apply to both families – those of the bride and the groom. The best thing to do is to get both families together to sit down and try to sort out who should be invited, with half of the maximum number going to each side. That way, there won’t be any arguments.
Make A List Of All Those Who MUST Be Invited
What you need to do first of all is to make a list of all those people who absolutely must be invited. If you have already chosen your venue, that will leave you with the number of additional people you can invite between you. If you haven’t yet chosen your venue and are looking to select the guest list and then find a venue that can accommodate your numbers, bear in mind that you still have to take your budget into consideration.
It is not just the cost of hiring the venue: every additional guest that you invite will have to be fed and watered, so if that amounts to, say, £30 per head, every additional guest is an extra £30. Inviting another 50 people is £1,500 extra on your budget.
So, you need to prioritise with your guest list. You really need two lists. The first is those who have to be invited, no matter what, and will be those closest to you. The second is those it would be nice to have along – IF the budget and the venue size allows.
You really need to set some rules for the second list. If some are people you have never met, or you haven’t seen them for a long time, or they are only on the list because you feel bad by not inviting them, then you have to be firm and cut them out. It is not a bad idea to create an Excel spreadsheet so that you can tick things off as you go and set boundaries for whether someone should or should not be invited.
You also need to keep track of RSVPs because there may be some people whom you have invited who are not able to attend, and this gives you a little leeway with those on your second list.
Deciding who to invite to your wedding, and whom not to invite, isn’t easy, but nonetheless it has to be done.