How did you keep your guest list from mushrooming?

[JonetteA]

I am just really concerned that this is going to get out of hand. The possibility of inviting more and more people is so easy. How did you control it? There are always people we can add. I want to make sure that no one feels slighted, but I don't want this to get out of hand where we can't pay for it.

 

[gradtchr]

I am having an intimate ceremony so that's how I did it. I kept telling myself I couldn't let it grow because I could not afford it. Now if it were family that wanted to come I would have gone custom then I have no clue how I would have kept it down.

 

[christineangel]

Ha Ha! That's how I did it too! The way I looked at it was that most of the people who you invite you invite only because you feel you have to. And many come because they feel they should (I mean- did i really care if my cousin's husband Bubba came?) And the biggest way to cut costs is to cut the guest list. So...when our guest list crept over 50, we threw it out and booked the intimate. We are not the kind of people who really enjoy being in the center of attention anyway- we gave serious consideration to just eloping. What did we tell our other family and friends? "Sorry, it's just for the immediate family" "Disney simply won't allow any more guests" Good luck keeping it under control!

 

[twojo21]

we are having a custom wedding but have still been able to keep our list at 66. we are having family only with 2 friends as our bridal party. the way we were able to keep the family guest list under control was to set a rule (which is pretty consistent in our family) close family only parents, siblings, grandparents aunts, uncles, first cousins only & their children. no second cousins, extended family, no dates (unless engaged) no coworkers. we also wanted a close, intimate feel to our wedding where only those who we really loved & those who really love us would be there thats why we choose a destination wedding.

best of luck with your guest list & stick to your guns once you've decided on it.

 

[pixie08]

I can see how that could easily happen ( I think i have family in like all 50 states and some european countries that could fill a football field j/k) I think the important thing to do is:

1. Set limits e.x. only close family (parents, siblings,aunts, uncles first cousins and close friends) so no one is offended.

2. Close your eyes and imagine this special day...it will be YOUR fairy tale and then think who you envision there...the most important people to you and you FDH. That is who should be invited.

Maybe I am a dreamer. I know there are politics and what not inolved but regardless this is your day and you want it to be special w/out going bankrupt! that is JMHO so good luck!

 

[fmdelano]

I feel EXACTLY as you do Jonetta! I can really see our event going way over budget and it frightens me! It also makes me sad that I feel like I have to exclude people because of money. Right now I have told only family and the wedding party about the wedding. I am giving them first choice, but as soon as I get replies that someone can't come, I am going to invite others to take their spot. I have an alternate guest list! Since the folks are footing a lot of the bill, it's all I can really do at this point. I keep telling myself that this day will be the most incredible day ever, and it will all be worth it! In the long run, I will probably end up with more people than anticipated, but that means more people to share the magic with, right? That's what it's all about anyway...

 

[ead79]

We determined how many people we could afford to pay for, then we really focused on that number being our maximum. Sometimes guest lists creep upwards due to several reasons: family members insist on inviting lots of friends/distant relatives, the guest list isn’t looked at as a true maximum, adding guests to all the invitations, etc.

We just made some “rules” for ourselves and stuck to them. For instance, we didn’t invite my parents’ friends’ adult children because that would’ve made our list huge. We stuck with only closer family members as well as not inviting coworkers. Since the guest count has a major effect on the price of a Disney wedding, we just stuck to our guns. We made our list and told my MIL how many people she could invite. We did not put “and guest” on most of our single guests’ invitations (we did include any live-in boyfriends/girlfriends as well as all spouses and fiancées obviously). We also estimated that a good number of those we invite would actually attend. This is important because our SM told us that Disney weddings typically have a much higher acceptance rate (like 80% instead of the typical 50%). It worked out well in the end, and I think we were only 3 people over what we anticipated.

 

[Codie]

I was EXTREMELY concerned about this in the beginning. We did not want a large wedding and with all the people we "had" to invite our list was at 120 in the beginning--of which we were hoping to get 60-70. The final count for invitations is 283. I am 4 days away from my reply rsvp deadling and I have 80 coming while still waiting for responses from 88 more. I'm guessing we'll end up around 115-130. It was a difficult decision for me, but rather than cut the invite list, I cut my dream of having an illuminations/Fantasmic dessert party. This way more people can share our special day and there is less hassle of cutting the guest list. We are doing the wedding at ADH and will be able to have our own viewing of Illuminations from there

I think the main reason that our acceptance rate is much lower than Disney's standard 80% (they told us to use that as our guide and I was close to tears several days discussing the invite list) is because we planned a very inexpensive (relative to Disney) cocktail reception the week after the wedding back at home. On our response card for the Florida invitation we put:
____we will attend in Florida;
_____we will attend local reception;
_____we regret we cannot attend.

This made the choice easier for some people who just did not want to travel. We also had a seperate "b" list for those that were not invited to Florida but were invited to the Hearthstone--this helped cut out a lot of ours and our parents' work associates and such from the Disney party.

Good luck with your decisions!!!

 

[Fantasia Sam]

Well we decided on all those people we would love to be there from the beginning LOL regardless of whether or not we could afford for them to all be there. We were kind of hoping that as we were travelling some distance not all of our UK friends and family would be prepared to make the trip - so we set on the magic number of 45. Then we sent out our newsletters with a reply card asking them outright if they were going to be able to make the wedding - we actually sent the newsletters out in waves so that we knew what numbers we were dealing with and as a few declined from the first "cut" (family and close friends) we then sent out newsletters to the second "cut" and then finally we had a third "cut" who were those people who if they happened to be in Disney at the same time as our wedding we'd invite them if we had the room and that's how we did it.

Because we had such a wide spread group of friends - no-one really knew if they were getting their newsletters at the same time as anyone else sooo we managed not to hurt anyone's feelings - of course if they're reading this now they're probably wondering what "cut" they were in.

That said those that did say in the very beginning that they couldn't make it - I was still trying to talk them into coming just 4 weeks before the wedding because by then Paul and I had already gone over the budget and thought what the heck, "what's one more person", but I'm sure when the final bill came in we would have regretted that but luckily no-one took us up on it and we stuck at our magic number of 45

Hmm actually I'm not sure I've managed to help you on this Jonette

 

[hjc1277]

The guest list was the main reason the we decided on a destination wedding. We didn't want to have to invite cousin Bubba just because... so we took the wedding down to FL. We have also told friends/family that we have to limit our guest list to 40 or less, because that puts us in a different category that we're not comfortable with (it would change our room minimum... although this isn't something that we are going to have an issue with, our guests do not know that. We are also having a reception when we get home and EVERYONE is invited to that.