Wedding

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Many couples anticipate creating their invitation list for their wedding as something that will be a fun and easy activity to do together. In reality, it can be a process of tough decisions and potential arguments. The arguments aren't always among each other, but more often than not with their family members. The first step in creating your wedding list is deciding what the total number of guests you are going to want to have is. Then you need to discuss with your fiancee how you think you should divide the list up. There are several categories of people you will have to invite and you will need to decide how large a percentage each group should be.

The first group is family. Is one of your families larger? Does one of them have more members that would be likely to attend based on transportation, age and other miscellaneous reasons? If one one your families looks likely to have more attendees based on these facts, then don't feel obligated to invite the exact same number of people from each family. How about coworkers? This can be a tricky area. If you work in a relatively small office of less than twenty people, you run a risk of insulting some coworkers if you invite close to half and leave the others out. My suggestion with that small office is either invite less than 5 of them, or invite them all. That middle range can cause hurt feelings. If you are having to make tough cuts to your list, coworkers should be the first ones to be eliminated, partly because some will fit into the last category. That category sometimes can be close to the same size as the family list, and this group is your friends? Do you and your fiancee have the same friends? If so then it's easy. Of course some will probably be in your wedding, but for those that aren't it's time to make decisions. The friends that are friends with both of you should receive the highest priority. Next should be good friends of the bride or groom that aren't necessarily friends of both. Your last group of friends will be ones you know from work, and family friends such as childhood neighbors. That last group can sort of be included in the family category.

Now, how do you invite people from each group? For family my suggestion is that you choose a family member on each side of the family and ask them to assume the role of creating family members they feel should be invited. Your fiancee and you can review each list and have veto ability or the ability to add some people if you feel some were left off. At least this will save you the bulk of the family decisions. For coworkers, make the decision on how you will do it together. Quite often as I said this group gets left out and then included in the friends list. Deciding on which friends that you both know get invited is rather each. Deciding on individual friends is harder though. My suggestion is to handle all the other categories first, then figure out how many invitations you have left as available. At that point divide that number evenly. If one of you can't come up with enough people to meet the number of your half of the invitations then go ahead and give them to your fiancee to use.

Hopefully this will make your invitation list a little easier to create. There are a few more things to consider for all of these categories though. Will your guests that you invite have transportation problems? Do they have kids, if so are you going to allow children at your wedding? What age will be your limit for children? This can affect who can attend the wedding. Were you part of any bridal parties recently? If so, and they aren't in your bridal party you should invite them to the wedding. Is there anyone that your fiancee can not stand? If so make sure you discuss it, usually compromises are easily made for the sake of your wedding. Are any of the people on your list having financial hardships? If so, you might want to go out of your way to make sure they know you would really like them to attend and a gift is not necessary. In general your guests will feel if they receive an invitation they should get you a gift, and this will help relieve some of the uneasiness. Remember, your wedding is a time to celebrate and have fun with your family and friends. Organizing your invitation list efficiently will help to ensure your wedding and reception are fun and happy events.