Pretty much anyone who’s ever tried to plan a wedding with a limited budget will tell you that one of the hardest things is working out who to invite in the first place. Sometimes it just feels rude not to invite someone, sometimes decisions are made based on group politics, and sometimes it’s not even you that invites them – parents perhaps paying for the majority of the wedding so often invite their friends without even consulting you, you generally feel obliged to invite people’s other halves and in the end the whole thing can spiral out of control. There are several impacts of this though, and those decisions are ones that can have a bigger influence on your day than you might think.
The temptation is to think that it’s just easier to invite them and that you won’t really have to speak to them much on the day, but this is a day that you’re going to remember for the rest of your lives and sometimes having those people there has more of a negative impact than a positive one. The fact is you WILL have to talk to them on the day, in fact you’ll probably spend a lot of your time going around making sure everyone’s ok, and the more people that are there the longer out of your day that’s going to take. Having certain people there also provokes different emotions in you, for example inviting your boss might make your life easier at work but do you have the kind of relationship with them that you really feel you can cut loose and just enjoy yourself with them there? Similarly just having the sheer volume of people that you don’t know there can make you feel more self-conscious and actually make the guests more shy too – would you rather shake your moves on the dance-floor in front of just a close-knit group of friends or a bunch of people you don’t even know?
For our own wedding we had to make some very tough decisions on numbers through a combination of factors: firstly budget was of course a factor – the more people you invite the higher the catering cost (one of the biggest expenses of the day). Secondly because we were getting married abroad in a place that, though very special to us, was not exactly plush with possible venues, the only spaces available to us (a beautiful but tiny little church and a fairly average sized restaurant) literally couldn’t accommodate too many people. Thirdly the cost for the guests of getting out there meant we really only felt we could invite our closest friends as we didn’t want anyone to feel obliged to come and to pay such an amount when they didn’t even know us that well. Also the timing was particularly difficult – with our timing having to work around photographing/filming other people’s weddings, many of our family members working in education and most of my friends working in theatres combined with an already very limited number of flights to the Island we were highly restricted in dates we could choose and we knew our final date would unfortunately rule out a fair few people.
In the end we decided upon a simple rule: whilst we would allow plus ones, we both had to know anyone we actually invited really well. It meant some really hard decisions on not including some people that would otherwise have definitely been on the list and at the time I was really worried about people being offended or feeling I didn’t rate their friendship highly enough. It also meant making a few difficult decisions like not inviting any of my colleagues because, although Dom did know some of them, I couldn’t exclude the ones she didn’t know because I worked so closely with all of them it just wouldn’t have felt right. These were genuinely tough decisions, but on the whole I think they were the right ones.
What it actually meant on the day was that everyone who was there was a friend of both of us, not just one of us, and if they knew both of us well then chances were they were going to be our closest friends. It also meant that most of them had met at some point or another and quickly led to a really close community spirit where everyone had a laugh together even if we weren’t there. It meant that everyone there really wanted to be there, they weren’t just there because they felt they had to or because their other friend was going. It meant that everyone was able to properly enjoy themselves, chat freely and have an incredible time and, apart from maybe a few that were invited but sadly couldn’t make it, I don’t think the dynamic of the wedding could possibly have been improved by adding another person.
So when you’re pouring over that guest list and coming to that dreaded realisation that the numbers don’t stack up, don’t worry so much about it. It’s not always possible to invite everyone and nor is it always a good idea. Those not invited will get over it, those that you do invite will genuinely make the day better. Weddings aren’t a game of numbers, they’re for celebrating with those closest to you both.
