I have to be honest here; wedding planning isn’t all a bed of rose petals! Unless you’re flying away to a tropical destination with 12 of your closest friends, the guest list is going to be a chore that takes way more time than you think it will! In this day of social media and instant messaging, most people really don’t keep up with current phone numbers, addresses and the latest significant other. If you’re like me, remembering your own details some days can be a challenge!
The best way to tackle the monumental task it to split it up amongst your families. Any aunts, uncles, cousins or guests that your Mom or Mother-In-Law just have to invite should be their task. Your friends, co-workers and besties fall to you and the same can be said of your own over-the-moon-to-be-doing-wedding-planning partner.
Don’t sweat the details at this point. It doesn’t matter who makes it onto the guest list so don’t get into any heavy discussions or arguments at this point, there is plenty of time later to do that! View this as a preliminary step only. You can sit down and have a pow-pow about who actually gets the royal invitation once you have make some other important decisions, like how much money this will cost and who’s footing the bill. The number of guests is afterall, the most critical factor in determining what you end up spending on your special day.
Give yourself a realistic goal of at least two weeks (and know that it will almost certainly take more) and create a central location that all parties can access at will (like Google docs). To the untrained wedding planner, this seems ὔber organized; the sneaky truth is that you can spy on how much has been accomplished without nagging . . . until it’s obvious that everyone is waiting until the last minute!
There is so much more to creating your final guest list than meets the eye. But this certainly gives you some idea of what you’re up against in the initial stages. Stay tuned for more on how to break it to your second-cousin-once-removed that they aren’t invited. In the meantime, feel free to put them on the list.