Guest List & Save the Date Cards

Once you have chosen your venue and Church, if you are having a religious ceremony then its time to start putting together your guest list, which can be quite a daunting task. Then you have the decision on whether to send out save the date cards or not, which I will get back to later.

Guest List

Starting off with the guest list, where do you start? We found the best thing to start is to set up an excel spreadsheet and start writing down family and friends you would like at the wedding. A great tip is to split your page into three columns: Bride’s family, Groom’s Family and friends. This then lets you see how many members of family are on either side and how many friends you have.

Once you have your first draft of the guest list then look at your venue/s and see how many  people they hold. For example if you are getting married in a small church then there will be a restriction on how many guests you can have then this may determine the size of wedding you can have. If you are in the situation where you need to cut down your guest list then maybe look at having a small intimate wedding with just close family and friends. Some people are now also choosing to have no children at the wedding, which would also cut down on guests too.

A fair way of putting together your guest list is to try and have equal number of guest from the both the Bride and Groom’s side. If the Groom has more family than the Bride then maybe the bride could invite a few more friends the equal the numbers out. It needs to be a joint decision and sometimes it’s good to ask your parents to see if you have missed anyone out.

If you have friends or family that you would like at your wedding but you can’t invite then to the ceremony then why not invite then to the evening part of the wedding. That way they can still celebrate with you both, just in the evening instead.

Save the Date Cards

If you having a long engagement or maybe a summer wedding then why not think about send out save the date cards. A save the date card is just a little card with your wedding date on it and the location so people know when you are getting married. The invitation would then be sent out closer to the wedding date, but that way you know your guests all know the date of the wedding. If you have time then you could have the save the date cards in the same design as your invitations. Just make sure you know exactly who you want to invite before sending then out because once someone receives a send the date card you have then invited them to your wedding.

If you decide not to send save the date cards and are having a wedding in the summer then why not tell your family in person what date the wedding is so they are aware of it. This is what we did as we didn’t have a final copy of our guest list till our formal invitation where sent out.

Hopefully this blog post has answered any questions you have about choosing your guest list and whether or not to send save the date cards. Why not take a look at the rest of the posts on weddings section of my blog and come back next week for a new wedding related blog post. Have a lovely week.

Steph x

*Photographs are from pintrest