Wedding Guest Lists

Handling Wedding Guest Lists

Once you've settled on a date, a budget, and venues for the ceremony and reception, one of the first tasks you should consider getting started on is your guest list. While the invitations don't need to be sent out too far in advance, your budget will dictate how many people you can invite to the reception, and sometimes making those choices can be difficult. Wedding guest lists can require a significant investment in time.

If you have a budget that allows for 200 guests at the price you agreed on with the reception hall, and you have 120 immediate family members to invite, that leaves you 80 openings for friends. It's up to you to decide who to invite to the ceremony and who to invite to the reception, with input from both sets of parents, of course. Later, you will have to decide how your invitations will differentiate between guests invited only to the ceremony and those invited to both venues.

An Online Alternative

Rather than investing half your time in keeping track of who has responded to your invitations and in order to make responding as simple as possible, you might want to consider using an online wedding RSVP company. They will provide you with extensive guest management services while saving you money on your invitations and virtually eliminating the stress you would feel as the date gets closer and people have not responded.

It's a fairly simple process. You provide the vendor with your wedding guest lists and contact information. They will provide your guests with a toll-free number and a dedicated extension that they can call in less than a minute. The vendor will even begin contacting non-responders so that you will know the final guest count by a date you specify.