Guest list

If we wouldn't invite them to a dinner party at our home, we didn't invite them to our wedding.

Easy for me: would they invite me or FH to a milestone event? Are they related to me AND I actually like them (or at least one of them if it's a couple)? That seemed to cut out most people I didn't really need there.

Do I talk to them often? Do I talk to them outside of family functions? Would I hide from them in the grocery store to avoid talking to them? lol jk on that one but you get the idea.

My guests list: have I seen them in the last 10 years (I’m local - & have a huge family).
FH guest list. Only aunts/uncles, and first cousins (with spouses). His dad has a huge family - most are out of state & we needed to be “fair”.

I kind of went the other direction - started from the absolutely necessary guests and built from there. I started with who I really wanted to have there (parents, sisters and their s/o's, best friends), then branched out into aunts/uncles/cousins, and once I did that, it pretty much hit my limit on my half of the guest list. I also have the advantage of our wedding being in a different state from my entire side of the family, so a lot of them probably won't be up for the trip in the middle of the school year.

My FH's mom was responsible for his half of the guest list.

My parents are paying for our wedding, so our guest list was a little more complicated… mom and dad's friends aside, we only invited those we've talked to/seen within a year's time

Such a tough topic. We had this issue too. My fiance's side of the family is huge. He has over 100 cousins. We had to make the first cuts on his side. We had to cut out two entire groups and we decided to do a summer picnic/reception the next year to celebrate with them. Our next cut was coworkers - and then friends we haven't been close to within 5 years. Good luck.

Have you talked to them in the last 3 months in pleasant conversation. Has future spouse had a pleasant conversation in the last 3 months. If not cut. Spouse / fiance(e) / significant other are auto invite with us. We also feel pinholed to give plus ones to adult single people because it's Valentine's day....

The other good way to cut the guest list is remove all kids. It's brutal and it sucks but kids can be big cost increase. Generally, nobody invites kids to $100 fancy dinner parties though... As a child who attended a lot of weddings, it also sucks to be a kid guest in one when you're under 13-14

Also you can eliminate by category. Like no cousins. Or no cousins, aunts and uncles. Or just parents and grandparents. You will get complaining about this but it sounds fair to invite no one rather than 1-2 uncles or aunts and ignore 15.

Have I talked to you in the last year? Have I seen you in the last year?

Have I talked to you in the last 6 months? Have I seen you in the last 6 months?

This includes cousins as well. I have a lot of cousins but only talk to them when we're somewhere like a sporting event, etc where we just happen to both be there. Not invited.

I chose family to invite by who has come to my past important events - communion, graduations stuff like that. My husband chose family members he knows... his family is huge and he's terrible at remembering ppl so it was safe to say if he knew exactly who they were then they were close enough to be invited lol. We didn't ask our parents for their opinions on who to invite

Friends is where we were a little stricter with. We only invited friends that we talk to or see about every 3 months. We both felt like weddings are more for family and only REALLY close friends should be invited

Haven't seen each other in over a year? Cut. (This includes family.)

Haven't talked in 6ish months at all? Cut.

Would I be mad if I wasn't invited to your wedding? No? Cut.

Would I invite you to my home? No? Cut.

Will I miss them there? No? Cut.

Honestly, cut everyone you REALLY can see your day without. We wanted 120 guests, we invited 166. Of course, we could afford it. But the wedding was way bigger than we wanted, and looking back, while it was the best day ever, it could have been WAY smaller and I still would have had an amazing time.

If i haven't spoken to you within a year then you don't need an invite.....This goes for ANYONE!!

If I haven’t seen you within the last year, you aren’t on the list. If we don’t talk on a normal basis, you aren’t on the list.

For family, we invited our parents, siblings, aunts & uncles, first cousins, and the children of first cousins (4 of FH's cousins have kids). We invited a couple other family members that we feel close to (1-2 great-aunts on each side). FH has a big family (one of his aunts & uncles had 9 kids...), so family takes up a large part of our guest list.

We had to make the most cuts on friends. We made the cuts by figuring out how important friends were in our lives in recent years, if we could comfortably hang out with them solo, and if we would make an effort to get together if we were in the same city. That made it pretty easy.

Oh easy. If you don't care about them to invite them to go out or to your home and they don't care about you for them to invite you to their home or out. Then nah. I "deleted" a lot of people like that lol