{"id":222435,"date":"2018-01-29T14:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whimsicalwonderlandweddings.com\/?p=222435"},"modified":"2026-03-09T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T16:37:08","slug":"wedding-guest-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wedding-guest-list\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wedding Planner\u2019s Guide to a Pain Free Guest List"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So, you\u2019ve booked your venue (congrats!) and maybe sorted one or two of your key suppliers (also congrats). Now, you might be starting to think about how you\u2019re going to invite guests. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you are newly engaged and in the early stages of planning your wedding, then one of the first tasks you’ll be tackling is deciding who you will (and won’t) be inviting to the wedding, and how you\u2019re going to communicate with them. Fortunately, we have found the best tools in the market to help just do that. Gather is the first guest experience platform, designed to <\/span>take the pain out of managing your wedmin<\/span><\/a>, helping hosts share event details across their chosen platforms such as WhatsApp, Text and Email while collecting and managing guest RSVPs and information all in one place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve decided who\u2019s coming to what events, Gather shows them only details of events they\u2019re invited to. Although that doesn’t make it much easier to work out which cousins get the invite in the first place<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll start off by letting you know that I feel your pain.  I’m from an absolutely huge family, with a mix of Italian and Lebanese Grandparents, and I think if I tally it up I probably have about fifty cousins.  Think ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ and you’re getting close (my Mother thinks Piriton cures literally every illness).  And when I say I have about fifty cousins, I don’t mean distant cousins that I don’t know very well; I actually mean the kind I know well and hug and kiss and actually really like, and they all have families of their own.   So if it ever came to a point of creating my wedding guests list (I live in hope), I think I’d probably have to run off to Vegas before I got past the first page.  Weddings can get very political, particularly if one family is paying a decent chunk of the overall costs, or if one partner has far more (or far fewer) direct relatives.<\/p>\n

Tempting as making a run for it might be, if you do want to celebrate the big day with your nearest and dearest, there’s going to be a process involved to figure out who makes the list and who doesn’t.  As tough as that can be, the good news is that this is 2026, and the strict rules of guest list etiquette don’t apply in quite the same way they once did.  Manners?  Yes.  Obligation?  Not so much.<\/p>\n

While the guest list in part is dictated a little by the formality of the wedding and who’s paying for it (yes, Mum and Dad still get a say if they’re contributing to the cost), things are a bit more flexible than they used to be.   There’s no need to invite the Aunt you barely remember and haven’t seen in a decade or to let your colleague bring along his latest date.  The wedding guest list is now (or at least should be) representative of the people you love the most, the people who share your lives with you and the people you will want to see in your wedding photos when you look at them in 20 or 30 years.<\/p>\n

So where to begin?<\/p>\n

Go Crazy<\/h2>\n

Any big decisions are often best made by starting off with a bit of a brainstorm session, so kick things off with each of you writing down the names of absolutely everybody you could possibly invite.  Put people into categories of immediate family, distant family, friends and colleagues and once that\u2019s done put both lists together and you\u2019ll have one great mega-list as a starting point.<\/p>\n

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Decide Who is On the ‘A List’<\/h2>\n

Now you have the mega-list all ready to go, it’s time to think about who you really<\/em> want there, so the next step is to categorise the guests into ‘A List’,  ‘B List’, ‘C List’ and ‘Evening Only’.  This is always going to be one of the most difficult tasks but the people on the ‘A List’ should be just your immediate family and closest friends who absolutely must be there, the ‘B List’ is the people you’d love to have there if there’s room, and the ‘C List,’…well….you can just cross those names off right away.  The evening guest list is fantastic for work colleagues, neighbours and more casual friends, as well as anyone who doesn’t make the final cut from the ‘B List’.  Most venues can accommodate a fair number of additional evening guests for a pretty small cost.<\/p>\n

Top Tip:  To avoid any dramas with family and friends, operate on an \u201cAll Or Nothing\u201d policy where you don\u2019t show favouritism.  So, for example, if you\u2019re not inviting kids, make sure you don\u2019t invite any kids and if you\u2019re inviting a cousin then make sure his \/ her siblings are invited too.  <\/em><\/p>\n

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Work Out How Many Guests You Can Invite<\/h2>\n

The next step is to have to look at what number is actually practical. This is going to depend on two things:<\/p>\n

1)     Space at the Venue<\/strong><\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

2)     Your Budget<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might choose to wait until you know how many guests you want to invite before selecting a venue, but if you have already made that decision or have a dream venue in mind then the capacity will dictate the number of guests you can invite.  A lot of venues also work on set packages, so if you’re booking a package for 80 guests then you know what your target number is from the get-go.<\/p>\n

Before booking anything, it’s also a really good idea to work out what you can actually afford, so I recommend drafting up your budget before making final decisions on anything.  Here’s my guide to get you started with that along with a downloadable template to make this as easy as possible.  If your budget isn’t stretching to accommodate all the people you really feel you want there, then have a think about the places where you’re happy to make compromises.  Little adjustments like swapping a band for a DJ or choosing a cash bar over open bar can save you thousands and expand the number of guests you can invite if that’s one of the things that means the most to you.<\/p>\n

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Making Cuts<\/h2>\n

It’s pretty likely you’re going to have to make cuts from the guest list, but remember not everybody is going to be able to make it.   This is especially true for destination weddings and summer weddings where the decline rate is often as high as 20%.  You’ll have the chance to bump people up from the ‘B List’ later on, so don’t lose heart.<\/p>\n

Top tip:  Send out your invitations early to allow time to send out a second set of invitations if some of the guests can’t make it.  Nothing says ‘You were on the B List’ quite as well as a last minute wedding invite!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Managing The List<\/h2>\n

As a wedding planner, this is usually the bit of the guest list where I step in and take control and after years of experience working with guest administration, there\u2019s still nothing quite as effective for a wedding guest list than a good old-fashioned spreadsheet.  Spreadsheets can be easily edited, shared, updated, translated and exported to other formats and the data is super-easy to manipulate and sort.<\/p>\n

The real key to getting this right (and saving headaches later) is to make the guest list a one-stop-guest-information- centre where absolutely everything you could possibly need to reference is included all in one place.  No one needs 50 different spreadsheets to keep updated, so make your life easy by getting all the guest information into one place.<\/p>\n

That’ll include all the obvious things like the guests\u2019 names and contact details, but if you want to be clever about it, then think about all the other things you might want to know and include columns for those too.<\/p>\n

This might include:<\/p>\n

RSVP responses to events other than the wedding (eg. rehearsal dinner)<\/p>\n

Ages and sexes of children<\/p>\n

Menu selections and details of any allergies<\/p>\n

Tracking of who needs transport if you’re providing it<\/p>\n

Information on hotel reservations<\/p>\n

Reminders of what gifts have been received so you can thank them appropriately later<\/p>\n

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\nI also find it saves heaps<\/em> of time to ensure you write the guest list up in a way that makes sense for people other than yourselves; so for example don’t put “Granny” on the guest list and expect the caterer to know later on who that is (honestly, this happens to me all the time), don’t use abbreviations of names or nicknames if you want to export the list later to print your place cards or use it to create your table plan and don’t group people together.  It works best with one row per person.<\/p>\n

So that’s my ultimate guide to the dreaded guest list!  I hope all of you can work through the family politics and feelings of obligation to pull together a list that’s really representative of the people you love the most. Expectations have changed and you’re free now to write your own rules, so go forth with confidence and create a wedding that is wonderfully, uniquely and beautifully you.<\/p>\n

Love Sara x<\/p>\n

Images by Dyanna LaMora<\/a><\/p>\n

*This is the forth article in the wedding planning feature series from Whimsical Wonderland Weddings expert contributor and wedding planner Sara J at Love Street Weddings*<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, you\u2019ve booked your venue (congrats!) and maybe sorted one or two of your key suppliers (also congrats). Now, you might be starting to think about how you\u2019re going to invite guests.  If you are newly engaged and in the early stages of planning your wedding, then one of the first tasks you’ll be tackling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":401005,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planning"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"mv":{"thumbnail_id":401005,"thumbnail_uri":"https:\/\/whimsical-cdn.wedissimo.com\/2018\/01\/gather-made-for-mobile-b6b20abe-300x169.webp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222435"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401006,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222435\/revisions\/401006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}