Trimming... or SLASHING - The Guest List

From the beginning, I wanted to keep our wedding intimate and small. As we started writing out our guest list, it quickly grew from the 75 people I wanted to over 300. Our $5000 budget limit quickly maxed out and spilled over to something closer to $7000, and I was starting to panic.


That's when Kristofer and I decided to do something drastic. We cut our guest list to 25.


But we did come up with a compromise to keep our friends and family happy, and let them participate in our celebration. 
We decided to have two receptions - one tiny picture perfect one for our intimate wedding, and one huge casual celebration reception to share with all of our friends.
Our intimate wedding guest list is made up of our parents, grandparents, siblings, and wedding party. That's it.
The second, casual reception guest list is made up of everyone else - aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. 
We'll have the second reception a few days after the wedding, and play a video of the ceremony on a projector screen for everyone to enjoy.


Now, I realize not everyone can use this plan for their wedding. If you can, do it! It's working out great for us so far.


For those of you who just need to cut down their normal wedding guest list though, here are some questions to ask yourself:

- Who are the important people in our lives?
- Is it necessary to invite co-workers?
- Are we including guests simply out of guilt? (i.e. They invited you to their weddings.)
- Are we including guests that we haven’t seen within the last year?
- What if a guest does not have a significant other. Are we allowing guests to bring dates?
- Do we want to invite children?
- What about extended family? Is it necessary to invite second cousins and great aunts?