Managing the Guest List

In the very early stages of planning I wanted 100 guests at our wedding. It's a lovely round number, big enough for all of the important people while still allowing you time to visit and made budgeting really simple. I could have been logical about it and divided the guest list into 50 guests for J's side and 50 for mine, but I wasn't. I could have been ruthless about it and limited the list in arbitrary ways like "people we've seen in the last 6 months" but I didn't. We decided that anyone over 20 years old would be invited with a guest. Many of our friends with children were looking forward to a kid-free night out, so we chose to only invite children in our families.

At the end of the day we had a guest list of about 130 people to invite. With a lot of out of town guests, let's see how the RSVPs turned out.

Total guests invited: 134
Total out-of-town guests: 48
Kids under 10: 5
Teenagers: 8
Total accepted: 100
Total declined: 34
Percentage local attending: 79%
Percentage out-of-town attending: 66%

We have the bridal party (no dates, no parents) sitting together at the head table and a total of 12 guest tables. Given that the Diamond Alumni Centre doesn't have an area for vendors to enjoy their meals, we added a 13th table just for them so they don't miss any of the action.

I hadn't expected the number of last minute changes to our guest list, some before we gave final numbers to our venue and unfortunately some not. We had 12 guests send their regrets in the week before the wedding so we ended up with a few empty chairs at our tables but didn't take it personally.

Speaking of seating arrangements, I wisely left the seating plans in the capable hands of Bridesmaid J and MOH K. I gave them the guest list, number of tables and seats per table, and the room layout. A few short hours later, they sent me this (names removed for privacy).

The seating plan turned out really well. Bridesmaid J was familiar with J's side of the family and MOH K knew my side so they easily avoided any awkward seating arrangements. It was wonderful to look around the room and see everyone talking and laughing with each other!