Your Guest List, Easy as ABC

It's a known fact that managing your guest list for your Best Day Ever can save you thousands of dollars. Just to get an idea of how much, let's just throw some numbers out. Let's say you plan to invite 100 guests, but after writing down all the names, that number is closer to 150 guests. With an excess of 50 guests, how does that translate to dollars and cents? Let's add it up:

Catering      $50/person x 50 guests = $2,500

Favors            $ 5/person x 50 guests = $   250

Chair Rental $ 3/person x 50 guests = $   150

Table Rental    $20/table* x 5 tables = $   100

Linen               $33/table** x 5 tables = $   165

Total = $3,165

*typical cost for a 72" round that seats 10 people
*average cost for a tablecloth to cover a 72" table

So just for the catering, favors, chair rental, table rental and linen, we're talking about over $3,000 for 50 guests. Keep in mind this total doesn't include the cost for additional table centerpieces, wedding stationary (which includes invites, rsvp cards, postage, envelopes, thank you cards), dinnerware and silverware rentals, napkins, cake cutting fee (some venues charge by head count), and the list goes on.

So how do we manage our guest list? It's as easy as ABC. A simple way to manage your guest list is by using the ABC-list. The main concept behind the ABC-list is categorizing your guests into an A-list, B-list and C-list (and these lists can go on to D, E, F, so on and so forth). Your A-listers would be the guests that are definitely invited. Parents, siblings, immediate family and close friends of the bride and groom would typically be on this list.

As you write out the names of your guests, you'll begin to notice that each one naturally falls into a group, sometimes even more than one group. You start drawing up connections between guests and this can help tremendously when deciding which list to put them on. For example, you've got cousin Kathy. You'd like to invite her, but cousin Kathy also has four siblings. If you invite one cousin, you kind of have to invite the others. In addition to your five cousins, who are all married, are their spouses. Already, that group went from one to ten in a heartbeat. On top of that they all have two kids each. Now you've just gone from one to ten, then ten to twenty guests. See how they can all add up?

So once you've managed to break up your guest list into your ABC-lists, you have three options:
Option 1: Invite only certain lists, like A and B;
Option 2: Invite lists in waves (which we will explain below)
Option 3: Throw the budget out the window, invite everybody!!! (which would mean creating the ABC-list was a waste of time)

Option 1: Invite only certain lists.
Depending on how big each list is, you may only be able to invite the A-list. This option is pretty straight forward. Some will make the cut, others won't.

Option 2: Invite lists in waves.
Just a heads up, this option will require a little more work. Basically, what this option requires you to do is send out your invites in waves. First, you send out the invites to your A-list. Next, you wait to receive their RSVPs. Once you have all of them in, you have an idea of your head count. Now you send out the next wave(s) of invites to your other lists. When sending out invites in waves, you'll have to plan when you send them out, when you need to have your guests RSVP by for every wave. This will mean different sets of RSVP cards. Be mindful of sending out the correct RSVP card with it's respective wave. You never want to send out an invite with an RSVP date that's already past.

Option 3: Throw the budget out the window, invite everybody!!!
If you had a million dollars to throw a wedding, then why not, right?

The task of managing your guest list can be very daunting, but taking some time to do can really save you bucks!