Guest List

You don't need to explain yourself to people you don't understand. If they contact you and want to know why they weren't invited, just be honest--you're keeping it small and you couldn't invite everyone, but you wish you could have and you'll share photos from the day if they'd like you to.

Appreciate your advice

Thanks! This is the thing I'm probably most stressed about, but I'll try!

Thanks! I'll try!

Thank you for the advice!

Literally went through the same thing. Our full guest list is 43, with our understanding being that 7 of them will most likely not be attending. We made the decision to invite parents & siblings, aunts & uncles (all but one has said they won't be coming - that's a story for another day but not as dramatic as you're hoping), but not cousins. Originally we were going to just invite friends who would have been in the wedding party (we weren't going to have one originally), and the 4 family friends that are essentially my godparents. When we found it would cost the same whether we had 30 or 40 people, and I knew I could invite a few more of my really close friends, figuring out where to draw that line has been IMPOSSIBLE. There's still one more friend and her FH I'm on the fence about extending an invite to (we have gotten so close in the last few months, but everyone else coming has been in our lives for years and it was kind of a "one of these is not like the others" situation).

All I've had to say to friends who aren't invited is "We wanted to keep it as small as possible, and with our venue we just can't invite everyone we'd love to celebrate with." But honestly no one has asked. It does help that we're doing a destination wedding in terms of explaining, but this was going to be the guest list whether we went to California or stayed home.

The hardest part for me was explaining it to my family, not my friends 😅

Yes, we are inviting parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and our favored cousins. Overall, I don't think anyone in my family who isn't close actually wants to be invited. So the family piece was easy. One of my cousin's got married with only a 70 person wedding (and he is loaded, so it wasn't money motivated) and another got married with 10 people, those were both pre-pandemic. So I think my family kind of knows what to expect from the adult children in my family! My fiance's mom is struggling with the non-traditionalness of the wedding, but I think she has come to accept that she has no say. Our venue can easily hold 100, so that is also not an issue. I just literally think big weddings are impersonal and don't want one. And I know I will hurt some feelings among my friends, but I just don't want a lot more people. It's hard because friends kind of come in batches. So I feel like if I invite "Jane" then I have to invite "Mary" kind of thing. But that just bumps the list up too high. Anyway, thanks for empathizing and reading my little rant.