Thursday Tips: First Comes Love, Then Comes A Guest List

March 31, 11 | 11 Comments

Every Thursday I’ll be joining a circle of some lovely ladies who are other wedding bloggers and industry professionals to bring you some wedding planning tips and tricks. We hope we can save you a little heartache and headache during your planning process and do what we can to help you prevent making the mistakes we did or have seen other brides make.

Sooo…

You’re engaged?! Congrats! You’re so excited, have screamed your head off, told all your friends and family right? You’re now already starting to think about a date, your dress, the wedding party, venues, budget, etc. But wait? Have you actually sat down yet to think about your guest list? No? Well what are you waiting for?!

This is my tip for you today: Draft up a guest list before you decide on your wedding location and ceremony or reception venue. Once the planning commences, I recommend you sit down with your sweetie and include any “influencers” aka “Mom & Dad” and write out the guest list. It may sound like common sense, but some do forget in all the excitement that a guest list can and will affect so much of your planning. Some questions to think about:

Will your wedding be in your home town or will you have a destination wedding? Where will your guests be traveling from? Do you care how far some of your guests will travel?
Are you inviting kids or will you have an adult only party (and then who’s feelings might you hurt along the way for doing it this way)?
Do you have a dream venue or perfect church already picked out? What is the maximum capacity at these venues? Will it accommodate the number of your guests?

The last one- yeah that was my mistake. I never wanted to get married in Georgia (where I did most of my growing up) and wanted to get married near a beach or be somewhere with an ocean view (and not on the Atlantic coast or Gulf). Sounds picky I know. So shortly after a brainstorming session with my mom who remembered growing up near a beautiful glass chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, we knew Southern California would be our destination! And a glass chapel that sits on top a big hill over looking the Pacific Ocean? Seriously? What’s not to love about that!

Although we knew the Wayfarers Chapel had a max capacity of 100 people, we thought, no problem! We wanted a small wedding with around 80 guests so that would be perfect! So shortly after our engagement, we sent off our very hefty contribution to the chapel (its much more expensive than the “typical” church contribution). Ceremony venue booked! Woohoo!

BIG MISTAKE. It was only after we booked the chapel and got further into the planning when we really sat down to look at our guest list. I have no idea what I was seriously thinking when I thought we’d be able to narrow our list down to only 80 people, or even at least keep it under 100. We’re super close to family and have a large circle of very close friends. No matter how we sliced it and diced it our list totaled around 180 people and we’d expect around 120 to show. But the chapel would max out at 100! AHHH. Then the cost of SoCal venues? Wow- seriously wasn’t expecting the numbers I was hearing, so that translated into now having to budget for more guests too!

Okay, so fast forward about 6-8 months later after we went through a job loss, a relocation, unemployment, starting a business, blah, blah, blah, we completely scratched the idea of a SoCal wedding, postponed it for another year and decided to take our wedding to Los Cabos, Mexico. This automatically cut our guest list down to around 45 people and our wedding expenses in half.

So all this to say, ladies- just keep your guest list at the top of your list of the first things to do. It will help you decide what venues to consider, what your budget will be, and even possibly what city, state, or country you decide to have your wedding.

And just for a stroll down memory lane of when I was planning my SoCal wedding at this amazing venue, here are a few pics from my trip out to see the Wayfarers Chapel which I didn’t plan until after I already booked it. Again, I know that was slightly backwards.

Glass ceilings, old stone steps, gorgeous wooden pews, and views of the Pacific….so in love.

My amateur shots of the Wayfarers Chapel, view of the ocean, and beautiful garden: