Wedding Wednesday: Making Guest List Cuts

Creating a finalized guest list often seems like an easy task until it comes to making hard decisions on who to keep and who to cross off the list. This can be especially difficult if you have a guest list you feel happy with but your dream venue can't accomodate the amount of people you would like to attend. Today, we're here to help you get the guest list cuts started by focusing on your list in two different sections: definite guests and potential guests.

Definite Guests

When you know you'll need to make guest list cuts, the first thing you should do is write down every definite guest that will be coming to your event. These are guests where you have absolutely no doubts whether or not they should be in attendance. This will very typically be immediate family, relatives you see often, and your closest friends.

Potential Guests

Once you have all of your definite guests listed out, you can now start the process of listing out your potential guests. On this list, write down every name you could possibily think of inviting outside of your definite guests. Once you've exhausted all of the names, you can now begin the cutting process. This will help you to ensure you don't get overwhelmed by adding people in the process of crossing people off the list. During the process, go through each name individually and ask yourselves similar questions to the following:

Do you see this person often? Or do you communicate with this person often?
Do you and your signifcant other both know this person?
Will this person be coming alone and not know anyone present?
Would this person invite you to their own wedding? Or other important events in their life?

These questions will steer you into thinking about the importance of having each of these potential guests at your event. As this can be a time consuming process with tough decisions, it's possible that you may need to go through your potential list more than one time if you are attempting to cut your list down to a specific number. Once completely finished, however, you should feel confident that the finished guest list will surround yourselves with people who will be looking forward to the celebration of your wedding day.