WHEN TO STOP ADDING TO YOUR GUEST LIST + free printable to help you stay organized!
It seems inevitable that someone will be forgotten. I remember the first disagreement I had with my husband was when we were creating our guest list for our wedding. It was awful!
You NEED to stick to your plan. If you are only able to invite 50 guests....only invite 50 guests. That means your Aunt Sue twice removed on your 2nd cousin's brothers side, may have to be left out. However..if you have an endless guest list (and budget) then by all means send Aunt Sue her invitation! You also need to respect the maximum person limit count at your venue. Try real hard to not go over that limit.
They say about 20% of your guests invited will not attend…so you can invite a “little” over the maximum but you are the only one who knows your guests best. I had a friend follow that rule and only 10 people or 5% didn’t show up to the wedding which they were not prepared for. So please have an idea in mind of who would come and who probably woudn’t come. I knew my 90 year old great aunt in California wasn’t going to travel on a plane to my wedding in Wisconsin, but she was still invited.
Something nice you can do is send a wedding announcement post card. This makes the extended friends and family feel like they were still included. But make sure to choose your words wisely. WeddingPaperDivas.com has great examples.
As far as smaller parties, lets take anniversary parties for example, you obviously need to invite those who are closest to you, especially those who were IN the wedding (if you are still close to them). Baby showers, Bridal showers, and Engagement parties too are similar to weddings where you need to make sure certain family members are invited. However, you can limit your guest count. For James and I's engagement party we decieded to only invite up to our aunts and uncles. No cousins because we both have 100 cousins so it would have been out of control. Even at our wedding we limited the dinner to only our first cousins…not even their children. Because then again we’d have more people than we could afford.
For dinner parties, just invite who you know you have room for. If you have a tiny apartment with a 2 person table...don't invite 12 people over for a sit down dinner. :)
Ok, ok, time for your freebie! You can get it here.
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