The Dreaded Guest List

Before we got engaged and before the idea of planning a wedding even entered into my mind, I remember hearing about how brutal the creation of the guest list can be. Of course, being the naive optimist I am, I thought "Yeah, right, that won't be us. It might get a little heated but no biggie. This is the least of our worries when it comes to the wedding."

Boy, was I wrong.

So, so, very wrong. Apparently everything I'd hear before hand was entirely applicable to our situation. As a couple, Mr. FP and I bicker a lot. But it's rarely about anything big. Nothing too life altering. So when we started screaming at each other the guest count, I knew we were in trouble. Sometimes, I almost wish that we were having a gigantic wedding with endless funds so we could just invite everyone we each wanted to and never have to talk about it again.

But that was impossible. And not what we really wanted. From day one, I knew I wanted a small wedding with only the people who were the most important to us. Mr. FP, however, (following in the foot steps of his parents who had 300+ people at their wedding) thought we could invite the whole world. So we devised a system in order to trim the list a bit. We decided to make an A list of must haves, a B list of people who we wanted there and a C list in case we win the lottery. The A list remained pretty constant throughout the whole process and in the B list we went through and asked ourselves some questions "Have we talked to this person in the last 2 years? Does this person know we're even in a serious relationship? (And most importantly...) Would it make or break our wedding day to have/not have this person present?"

Thankfully, this worked quite well. Of course, we had the typical resistance from family members and parents who thought we should be inviting more people. For Mr. FP's family, I think it was more difficult to accept the idea of a small wedding because they are such a large family. And my parents kept wanting to invite people that they/I was close to at one point in life with little to no contact since. And while I understand that a wedding is about more than a couple and that the parents involved are celebrating that day also, it makes no sense to me to invite people Mr. FP and I are not close with. I'm lucky enough to have a man who agrees with me on this point, so it was much easier to ignore the opinions of others. And that's what we did.

We've settled on somewhere between 70-80 people and we're leaving some room open just in case. But since the ceremony/reception is being hosted at my family's cottage and the reception is held under tents, we only have so much room. Which is another good reason to keep it small.

If keeping it small means we get to have a meaningful connection with every guest at our wedding and spend quality time with each and every person on the wedding day, then it seems worth the hassle to me.