How to make a wedding guest list

Who should be included on your wedding guest list?

Your wedding guest list should include immediate family members (parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins) and your closest friends (with their partners and children if applicable). However, you will have limitations to your guest list based on the size of your venue and your wedding budget. This means that you may or may not be able to consider adding more distant relatives, work colleagues, friends that you have not seen in a long time, or close friends of your parents, who have known you since childhood. 

Steps for finalising your wedding guest list

Usually, you will have to decide on your guest list early on in the wedding planning process as this will help determine the size of the wedding venue you are looking for and the budget that you are going to need to spend. Following these steps will help make finalising your guest list that bit easier. 

1) Compile a list of everyone you would consider inviting to the wedding

A good place to start is to look at the ideal world scenario. That means writing down everyone you can think of who you would like to be there on your wedding day. This should include everyone that you are not quite sure about as it is easier to start narrowing down a big list and this should ensure that no one gets forgotten. 

Start with your closest family members and friends and then work outwards. Add in distant relatives that you remain in touch with, school or university friends that you haven’t seen in a while, close work colleagues and then the plus ones and children of friends and family. This will naturally open the conversation around whether you both agree that these people should be there and whether not including someone on the list risks causing family frictions. 

2) Try to put guests into a priority order

Split up your guests into those that you couldn’t imagine getting married without and those who fit more into the category ‘it would be nice if they could be there' so that you can adapt your guest list to your budget and venue capacity. 

3) Work out how many guests can be covered in your wedding budget

The number of guests you can add to your list will be determined by your venue. They will already be able to give you the maximum number of guests your venue can hold for both the wedding breakfast and any evening celebrations and then you will have to look at how many guests you can afford. Usually, your venue will give you a price per guest for the main meal and for an evening buffet. It will then be up to you to work out how many guests fit into your initial budget. If your venue size and budget are particularly limited, you will need to limit your guests to the ‘must-haves’ so be sure to start letting people who might expect to be invited know quite quickly that you are planning a small wedding to avoid disappointment. 

4) Run your guest list past your parents

It is customary to let your parents have a say in your wedding guest list, especially if they are paying for part of your day. You will, however, want to make it clear from the start how many guests you think you can afford in order to manage your parents’ expectations about adding in any of their relatives you do not know very well or any of their friends. But remember, add the end of the day, the decision is yours, you just need to be able to explain your choice to your parents if ever there is any friction. 

5) Apply the same logic to all family members

Including and excluding certain family members can cause tension that can jeopardise relationships so it is essential to think about how to manage these situations. Try to keep things fair between you and your partner’s family and make sure that you apply the same logic to everyone. If you are close to only some of your cousins, consider whether the remaining ones will be offended if they are not invited to your wedding. 

6) Consider inviting more guests to your evening celebrations

If you are having problems accommodating everyone on your main wedding guest list, you can always see whether or not your budget can stretch to inviting them to the evening celebrations. Often adding a few more guests to the buffet, does not add too much expense to your budget and can ensure that some of your more distant family members or friends are still included in your big day. This is only, however, an option for guests living locally as it is not appropriate to invite guests from far away for only a few hours of celebrations in the evening. 

Top tips for your small wedding guest list

Narrowing down your guest list for a small wedding can be a difficult task and often means that you have to be quite strict about who is and is not invited. Here are a few basic tips to help you in deciding who makes the cut:

• Only include very close family and your best friends and make it clear early on that this is the case so that everyone understands that they shouldn’t necessarily expect an invite.
• Limit plus ones to partners you know or those in long-term relationships
• Limit children to those of very close family and friends
• Don’t invite anyone out of guilt just because you attended their wedding for example.

How to keep track of or manage your guest list

Excel sheets are an easy way to keep track of your guest list or your wedding planner book may have dedicated pages to help you note down who is and isn’t attending your big day. However you decide to note down your guest list, it is a good idea to create a table with multiple columns where you can write down if the guest is attending or not, if they have any dietary restrictions, if they require the transportation you have organised etc. 

Who should I send save the dates to?

Be sure to send save the date cards to everyone you plan on inviting to the wedding. This means you should be sure of your guest list at this early stage to ensure that you do not send a save the date card to anyone that would later be uninvited. 

Who should I send wedding invitations to?

You should send wedding invitations to everyone on your guest list, sending one per household. Be sure to write the names of specific guests on the invitation if you are not inviting everyone in the household, i.e. you have decided not to invite the children to the wedding. 

Even if you know that someone is definitely going to attend, etiquette dictates that you should still send them an invitation. You should also send invitations to your parents and anyone in the bridal party so that they have a copy to hold onto even if you know that they wouldn’t miss the day for the world. 

How many wedding invitations should I order?

Order one wedding invitation per couple or household and not one per person. If ever, you are not inviting everyone in the household, be sure to add names to the invitation to make this clear, this is especially important for letting people know whether or not they can bring children to the wedding. You may like to order a few spare invitations for any last-minute additions to the guest list and ensure that you order a copy for yourselves to keep in your wedding scrapbook or memory box!