26

Apr

2013

Diary of a Boho Bride – Faye and Jens, Entry 3: The Dreaded Guest List

diary of a boho bride

Afternoon everyone! and how are you all this Friday afternoon? Today on Diary of a Boho Bride it’s the turn of Faye and Jens who are getting married in August. When we met up with Faye last time she was telling all about getting the wedding party together to meet each other. Today it is the turn of the dreaded guest list. Putting the guest list together can be tricky, who to invite, who not to invite, how many people. For some couples it can be one of the most stressful aspects of the wedding planning. Today Faye tells us all about their experience as well as offering some advice for those of you who are about to embark on this wedding job!

Diary of a Boho Bride

I’ll pass the blog over to Faye…………..

Hi everybody, Only 3 1/2 months till our wedding and the pressure is starting to show. The most recent thing that we have ticked off our to-do list were the invites. They have now gone out and we are receiving a steady flow of replies back. I just love opening my postbox and finding out little RSVP postcards inside

Diary of a Boho Bride

Of course though before the invites can go out, we had to do the dreaded guest list!! This was something that we thought about soon after booking our venue but that was nothing until it got very real and we had to start justifying why we chose the people on our list, and then scrubbing a few names out along the way. The main problem was that we had our thoughts of who we wanted to share our day with, our parents had another expectation and there were then the people who just assumed they were coming (I have had a few awkward conversations with people who would ask when the wedding was so they could book time off work)

So I wanted to share with you our little guide on how we kept ourselves sane during the whole process.

Diary of a Boho Bride

Rule 1- Budget.
If you have an unlimited budget then that is fantastic and you can invite who you like, if not then you need to consider your numbers very carefully, many venues can charge around 50-100 pounds a guest on average (if you calculate food and drink for the whole day) so the figures can start to snowball out of control pretty soon if you are not number crunching savvy.

Rule 2- Ask your parents what their expectations are.
If your parents are paying for the wedding, they may have some expectations as to who should also be there. It is always good to ask both sets of parents while you are at the early stages of guest list editing so that you can accommodate any requests.

Rule 3- Venue space.
This speaks for itself really, if you have a village hall booked, please don’t expect to fit 300 guests into it. You should also think about the wedding licence, we will hopefully get married outside in the gardens, but if it rains we will be in the old dairy which can only hold 100 guests during the ceremony. This means that we still have to consider our plan b just in case good ol’ blighty has a downpour in mind for us

Rule 4- To plus one or not to plus one.
Always tricky, we used the rule that if they are a committed couple and we know the partner then they are invited. If not, or our friend is single then they didn’t receive a plus one. Our decision was based on budget and space, we have had one reply (which wasn’t a plus one invite) from a friend who recently returned home from travelling, and bought back a new girlfriend with him. He replied that he AND his new girl were coming. We just explained that we didn’t have room and offered for her to join him in the evening instead, thankfully it worked out fine.

Rule 5- Time test.
Have you seen this person in the last 6 months, is there any reason for this if not (illness, travelling or new baby etc.) If not, does this person actually mean that much to you. These are the types of questions you should be asking when looking at your list. Our rule was if we hadn’t seen them and if they didn’t know myself or Jens personally then they were not making the cut.

Rule 6- Do you want to see this person in your wedding photos.
You should be surrounded by the people that you care about and love on your day, and I know that I personally do not want to look back at my photos in 2 years time and think ‘who the heck is that!’. Sounds harsh but just think of all the ex’s that your friends have had…would you want them in your professional snaps??

Diary of a Boho Bride

 

Good luck with your guest lists, some of you will find it a doddle and others will not. For those who do, you are lucky lucky things and for those who do not, well you are not alone and you will get there!

Faye xx

 

 

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Comments

    Malaya

    The guest list is absolutely one of the parts of wedding planning I’m dreading! However, your tips and tricks make so much sense and will definitely make the uncomfortable more comfortable! Thank you so much for sharing!

    Reply
    Charlotte

    Thanks for the great tips! We are thinking about sending save the dates out soon and pretty much all the same decisions need to be made – we thought it would be courteous to put on the save the date whether the guest is invited to the evening only or the whole thing, to avoid people being disappointed when their proper invite comes through saying ‘arrive 6pm’.

    Your invitations look fab! Have you posted about them before? If not, where did you get them printed? We just had an engagement shoot done and the photos are so lovely we may scrap my handmade idea and go for something like yours. x

    Reply
    Faye

    Hi Malaya and Charlotte,
    Glad that my tips could help :-)
    @ Charlotte I haven’t posted about the invites before. The photos were taken by our photographer Jordanna Marston when we met her in October, and we used an online supplier from Germany called myprintcard.de to print the cards. The have lots of templates to use and the service was great and very quick. I know that vistaprint also do similar wedding invite templates and they are also based in the UK (so no translations needed :-)) Good luck with your invites! x

    Reply

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