Wedding Planning: How to Make Your Guest List with Ease
Making a wedding guest list can be stressful. Who to invite and who to leave out? It’s a tough decision to make. Do you invite your second cousin twice removed or your best friend from high school? The guest list can make or break the wedding, so it’s important to get it right. Here are a few tips to help you make the perfect guest list.
“Do you plan on inviting children? Don’t forget their names. Even though they are small they still count toward the total guest count!“
Create categories for your list
Grab a piece of paper or create an excel sheet and break it out into the following 4 sections:
- Your Family
- Your Friends
- Their Family
- Their Friends
Next, sit down with your sweetie
Grab some coffee or an adult beverage of your choice and start adding names to the list. List them all! You can always go back later if you need to cut the list.
- Your Family: list them ALL, you can downsize later if needed.
- Your Friends: Include ALL of your friends that you would like to invite. Have old friends you haven’t spoken to in a while, or some coworkers you’d like to have but are unsure if you will have enough room. Write them down and put a little star or symbol next to their names so that you know to review them later.
- Their Family: list them ALL, you can downsize later if needed.
- Their Friends: same goes for their friends
Share friends? You can create a 5th category or add it to the person’s list of whom became friends first.
Do you plan on inviting children? Don’t forget their names. Even though they are small they still count toward the total guest count!
Now Review
Take a look at your budget and see how many people you can realistically afford to invite. This will help you narrow down your list and avoid overspending on your big day.
Use this as a rough draft for your guest count to find your venue. You can use the count to look at venues that will fit that many guests; or if you’ve found the perfect venue already with a lower max guest count you can work your way through to narrow down the list.
With these tips in mind, making a guest list for your upcoming nuptials should be a breeze! With the guest list draft, you can then start finalizing the budget, finding your perfect wedding venue, figuring out catering and cake estimates, looking at stationery, and other fun things that pull your day together!
Once your list is finalized it’s time to collect your wedding guests’ addresses! Download a free spreadsheet to start collecting addresses! You’ll need to know a household count before ordering save the dates or invitations.
Download the Guest Address Spread Sheet