Creating Your Wedding Guest List With Minimum Conflict

Ah, the guest list. One of the earlier tasks you need to tackle with your wedding preparations, tying in with your budget and venue selection, managing the guest list can be tricky as you and your partner decide who will be celebrating your special day with you. Birando USA guest blogs this week with advice on prioritizing (and sometimes placating) your guests, and considering children and +1s on your guest list.

The Art of the Intimate Wedding

Planning for 50 or less
Kicking off our big week of double guest posts, Nathalie Green from Pillingers Hiring Service in Sydney, Australia, shares her expertise on planning a wedding with a smaller guest list.

Wedding fashions are susceptible to many a peak and trough. I’ve noticed the big-event spectacles of old are ever-so-quietly being replaced with small-scale ceremonies. Guest lists of 20-50 are taking over meandering inventories of extended family, part-time co-workers, high school pals and the new arm candy of a distant cousin. There are many reasons for the current change in the marital tides: economic climates around the world are a tad dryer than what they have been in the past. Loved-up couples have high rents and expenses that make the idea of inviting every Tom, Dick and Harry under the family umbrella a daunting, if not impossible, task.

What Makes the Best Wedding Ever?

Answer: Not having a cookie-cutter day

During wedding planning, soonlyweds always wonder which part of their preparations will really be noticed by their guests, which things will make a good impression, and what guests will remember from the day. I thought it might be interesting for other soonlyweds to know what things got noticed at another couple’s wedding, for better planning out their own. There are loads of things I desperately hope our guests enjoyed, but from going through and totaling up what we actually received unsolicited compliments on, I noticed a trend: the things people said they liked are things we did a little differently from every other wedding, or where we allowed our personality to shine through.

How To Be A Good Wedding Guest

6 Ways to Make Things Easier for the Groom and Bride-to-be

Forget Emily Post, forget the guides to etiquette – this is about how to be the kind of wedding guest the bride and groom want you to be. Howl with dismay if you will, but – seriously – this is what brides and grooms wish their guests knew. Planning a wedding, though lovely and roman- tic, is a very stressful process… and there are a few small things you as a guest can do to make things a little bit easier on the happy couple.

Before: Children at Weddings

No kidding

One of the most divisive and delicate matters you will need to navigate while preparing your wedding guest list is whether or not to invite children to the big day. Many brides and grooms have lost sleep over offending and inconvenien- cing parents who are guests, and you will find endless bridal forum debates on this topic. There is no blanket solution to the kid-dilemma, and it will depend entirely on your circumstances.