The best way to save on your wedding is to trim the guest list.
Remember, it’s not just the catering one has to keep in mind: each guest requires a place setting, chair, wedding favour, and so forth.
First things first, sit down with your fiancé and write a list of everyone you think you should invite.
Now, check-in with both your own and your significant other’s parents to get an idea of who they would like to have at the wedding.
Once you have this list, name it: THE LONG LIST.
1. VIP’S
2. SHOULD INVITE
3. NICE TO HAVE
1. PARENTS
2. SIBLINGS
3. CHILDREN
4. CLOSE FAMILY
5. CLOSE FRIENDS
These people are the ones who share your life, who you communicate with regularly, and who are close to you. They are the guests who are essential at the main event, the ones with whom you want to share this momentous occasion.
Next, with a yellow highlighter, mark the following group of people. We call them the “SHOULD INVITE” group. This will be the group that includes old high school friends, varsity friends, business colleagues, and extended family members (second cousins) aunts, uncles.
Finally, the blue highlighter is used to mark the people who you would like to have or feel obliged to invite out of courtesy for your existing guest list, such as parents’ friends, co-workers, old school acquaintances.
Once you have highlighted all the potential guests according to their role in your life, you can transcribe the list into a sheet that displays them in the respective columns, and use the HAPPLY BUDGET CALCULATOR to determine the amount you have to spend on reception.
By now, your reception venue will have quoted you a “price per head”, and a simple calculation will provide you with the total number of guests you may invite (bearing in mind that not everyone will be able to attend, you can have a “waiting list”).
Count the number of guests in each of your spreadsheet columns and calculate their price per head respectively. This is how you will determine whether your budget allows for everyone on the list, in which case… BRING ON THE PAAAARTY!
If not, start trimming.
1. “Do we both know this person?”
2. “Will, we both want to keep this person in our lives going forward?”
3. “Have we both spoken to this relative in the last year?”
4. “Do I just feel obliged to have this person at my wedding?”
If the answer to these questions is predominantly ‘no’, then sadly it means that they are not prevalent in your lives, and it is, therefore, unnecessary to account for them on your big day. Go through these exercises will all your guests until the price per head balances with your available budget.
Statistically, an average of 10-20% of guests will decline the invitation, which leaves some leeway in case you would like to add these people to the guest list at a later date. Using the HAPPLY invitations, you can easily add a member of the waiting list as you receive a “declined” invitation without offending your guests
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Happly is coming soon, be the first to sign up when we launch!
