How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

It's easy!  Just make your wedding guest list!

I should preface this post by saying that I think in numbers.  It's creepy.  I'm like the female Rainman.  Even as a child, I loved my name because it's length was a palindrome...7 letters for my first name, 3 for my middle, 7 for my last...best name ever?  Oh yeah.

So even before I had officially been engaged, I would doodle numbers all over my class notes.  Not numbers pertaining to budgets or amounts of food/drink to have.  No, I started adding up our guest list because I'm weird.  It was truly a bad idea as well, because every time I added I always got the same number in the high 200s.  Inside that bloated number held poor Mr. Biscuit's meager 63 guests.  UGGGHHH.  It wasn't that I was being selfish, I just have a large Italian family and my parents have quite a few friends in the area.  I never thought it would be a bad thing until my wedding.

This number plagued me.  298 was officially the bane of my existence.  So much so, that if I had to take a plane somewhere and the flight number just happened to be 298, I'd probably just catch a bus to my destination because it was a bad omen.  OK, maybe not.  This number was really more of an issue when I looked at venues in my "city."  Trying to find a venue that could hold 150 proved almost impossible, as I've stated before.  To summarize that adventure, we had two options: the venue I eventually picked, or another ballroom with similar food and a price tag that was about twice as much.  This option was immediately nixed, as it could have possibly caused my parents to live on the streets in their retirement.

After I realized this,  I tried cutting down the guest list as much as I could.  I didn't remove anyone from Mr. Biscuit's list, since the poor guy had so few to begin with.  Instead, I tried to only include people I actually KNEW using a few rules I came up with:

Rule #1: Make as few people as possible angry.

Rule #2: Cut out all +1s unless the SOs are married/living together/engaged.

Rule #3: Cut out the kiddies.  This would bum me out, but since we had a number issue, it seemed the easiest way to combat it.  One of my cousins alone has five children!

By implementing rules 2 and 3 we cut our guest list down to a super happy 226.  However, I realized that by cutting out plus ones, some guests, especially those who have been dating their SO for awhile, may feel uncomfortable.  By excluding children, I was worried about the dreaded Momzilla coming at me with lasers.

 I don't think we'd be able to combat her, even with a laser cat:

personal photo

So I was i quite a bit of trouble by this point.  Rules 2 and 3 contradicted Rule 1.  What was I to do?  Fate stepped into play here, as my grandmother decided to invite around 85 additional people.  Awesome.

After I realized there was no way I could keep the guest list around 300, I decided to book the less expensive of the two venues where I didn't have to worry about numbers.  Weddings have a wonderful way of causing some horrible drag out fights, especially over the guest list, and I'd like to keep mine as drama free as possible (see Rule 1).

So what does this mean?  Everybody gets a plus one (though I truly hope that the few single friends I have would only bring SO and not some hooker they met on a random corner).  You have kids?  Bring 'em.  In fact, have the kiddies come and you stay home, as they are infinitely cheaper.  Mr. Biscuit's 16 year old's cousin's girlfriend?  Bring her, too, we'll all have a blast.  Are you in my dental school class and Mr. Biscuit recognizes your face?  Yeah, what the heck, come and enjoy yourself. We have plenty of room!

Now, I realize I have a truly unique situation, as not everyone can have nor wants to have a Big Fat Italian Wedding.  To be honest, an intimate <50 person wedding sounds wonderful to me, but it's just not in the cards.  I've come to terms with the fact that I won't know some people at my wedding, and that's OK.  My grandmother and parents will be happy, and since they've spent 24 years of their lives trying to make ME happy in addition to being generous enough to throw a wedding for me, I think that they can invite whomever they care to.  This was not a wedding battle I wanted to fight, as I'm sure there will be more decisions I make that they don't agree with down the road.

Our guest list, while still not 100% confirmed, is a staggering 352.  However, many of these guests live far, far away, and I'm assuming our wedding will have around 270 in attendance, though I'm planning for 320, just in case.  I'm pretty scared about being able to plan an event on that large of a scale, but if I pull it off, I think I should win some sort of award.

How did you guys curb your guest list?  Anyone else just give up and give in to appease their family?