Ten Great Ways to Cut Down on the Size of your Guest List for your Caribbean Destination Wedding
Hola Brides and Grooms!
Can you believe it’s yet another official holiday in Puerto Rico? I’m not sure what we call it — “Sober Up after Three King’s Day Holiday” maybe? But it’s quiet here on the island, and we woke up to a grey sky and drizzling rain. Good — maybe it will clean up the air a bit! I’ve been having allergies ever since the volcano at Montserrat went off again over the holidays. Anyway, today I’m blogging about 10 great ways to skinny down the size of your guest list if the numbers are starting to look daunting.
I remember when I got engaged — and I’m not even kidding about this — within a week, my mom had already put together her guest list (including all the family on her side she felt needed to be invited) and her guest list was more than 150 people long. This was before we added Bill’s family and our friends, not to mention colleagues. This happens to lots of brides whose parents love them and whose moms have been planning their daughters’ weddings in their heads for 25 years. If you get married in your hometown, sometimes the invitation list is unbelievably long because you don’t want to leave out anyone who might feel hurt. My cousin Will married his wife Anna in her hometown in Kentucky, where her family owns all the funeral homes. Well, more than 500 people were invited because that’s just the way it is in Hopkinsville. Everyone in town knows her family and anyone who wasn’t invited would have been devastated. Situations like that make destination weddings more and more attractive to brides and grooms across the country. With the current economy, a destination wedding is a great way to economize. You can have a beautiful and unforgettable wedding day surrounded by the people you love most in the world without breaking the bank if you don’t do it in either the bride or the groom’s hometown.
It’s really important to try to have an accurate guestimate when you’re planning your budget. Sometimes you need to slim down the list BEFORE you mail the invitations. Here are 10 tips for cutting your guest list from the beginning:
1) Only invite people who you actually want to have attend your wedding. I’m warning you — don’t think that they won’t show up just because you wouldn’t go if you were invited to their wedding. People use destination weddings as an excuse for a mini-vacation and you should reasonably expect that anybody you invite may attend. It’s a good way to end up with somebody you don’t really like in your close knit group in the tropics if you’re not selective.
2) Don’t invite anyone you haven’t seen or talked to in the past two years. Some people even skinny that further to one year. It’s a good logic. If you haven’t seen the person, talked to the person, or at least exchanged mail/email/etc. with the person, they probably don’t need to be invited to your wedding.
3) Don’t invite everybody who invited you to their wedding if the rule in #2 applies. If you are getting married at 35 years of age, you are not required to invite any of the friends who invited you to their weddings in your 20s unless you are still in close touch with them. And I don’t mean Facebook close.
4) Do not invite your sorority sisters or fraternity brothers. I don’t mean skip the ones you are still close to, but we all know the girls who invite all their sorority sisters (including the ones they haven’t seen since college graduation) to their wedding 10 years later. Somewhere, deep down, these brides just want to make sure that everybody knows they’re getting married. But picking up the tab for additional wedding guests is a hefty price to pay for that announcement. Better to let your alumni magazine know and leave it at that.
5) Don’t invite anyone from your office, unless there are one or two people you are particularly close to. If you’re having a destination wedding and then a celebration back home afterwards (of whatever type), you can invite your work friends to that party. But leave them off the list for the weekend in the tropics unless you’re trying to grow your guest list. You are not required to invite your boss to a destination wedding — but it’s a good idea to invite them to anything you have at home.
6) It’s harsh — but if you’re desperate to keep your numbers out of control, don’t let your single friends bring dates. Now, in general, I’m not an advocate of this and I didn’t do it for my own wedding. I let all the girls bring whomever they wanted. Fortunately, none of them were in serious relationships when I got married and they left the dead weight at home. But if you have a friend who has a different man every week, you don’t have to let her bring a guest. And if you have an out-of-town friend who is dating someone new you haven’t met, you’re not obligated to invite him either. Remember, wedding invitations for destination weddings usually go out pretty early and as such, who knows who your friends will be dating then. In fact, some might scramble to come up with a date if you give them an “and guest” and then you’re stuck picking up the tab for some idiot your friend isn’t really dating. And what if the guy is loud and obnoxious, or acts like a jackass? ‘Nuff said. Use your judgment when deciding whether to grant girlfriends (and guy friends) the privilege of an “and guest” on the invitation to your Caribbean destination wedding. Do you really want to spend the weekend with some fool you don’t know? Friends in long-term serious relationships, in living together situations, or who are engaged are automatically extended an invitation to their partner. That’s not optional.
7) Don’t overly publicize your wedding on social networking websites. I’m not really on Facebook (but I will be, it’s a New Year’s resolution), but I tried out MySpace years ago and I’m familiar with Twitter. I’m just too busy to be bothered with any of them. But I do remember that the minute I logged on to MySpace for the first time, I got a whole bunch of messages from losers from high school that I had no desire to be reconnected with. In fact, with a few exceptions, I’m pretty much in touch with everybody I want to be in touch with from my high school and college years. Anyway, it’s a well-known fact that “old” friends start coming out of the woodwork when they hear you’re getting married. And unless you’re dying to rekindle those friendships and invite all these fools to your wedding, wherever it is, be careful what you post on the Internet. It’s nobody’s business. If you have a wedding website, that’s fine. But give the web address to your guests, not the general public. That’s also a safety and security issue — does the entire world need to know when you and both of your families will be out of town?
Have a Child-Free wedding. Yeah, I know it sounds mean, but more and more people are doing it. The Caribbean just isn’t the best venue in the world for children unless you’re staying at a resort with a children’s program. Otherwise, their parents need to stay alert and sober at all times to watch them. That’s not my job, nor anybody on my staff. If you want a babysitter on site at events, we can set that up — but you will pay for it and it’s not cheap by the end of the weekend. It’s very easy to simply omit the children from the invitation and include something in the travel information packet that explains some of the wedding venues you’re using don’t permit children. Believe it or not, you pay the same amount for children as adults for food, most of the time. And even a kids’ reduced bar rate will add up if you’ve got several of them. Anyone with issues who can’t leave their kids won’t come (and is that really a bad thing?) and those who have taken the time or spent the money to arrange for childcare so they can enjoy an adults-only weekend will truly appreciate their absence.
9) Don’t invite all of your relatives. Especially if you’ll be having some event back at home later on, you don’t have to invite more than your immediate families unless you’re close to your cousins and other relatives. Everybody gets invited to the reception back home. Just remember to invite your family in levels — for example, if you’re not inviting cousins, don’t invite any cousins. If you’re inviting your aunts and uncles, invite all of them. Obligatory invitations to elderly relatives who certainly won’t come are the exception, but every once in a grand while they surprise you, so be careful. I had a bride in total freak-out last year when she realized we’d have a wheelchair guest about a week before her totally wheelchair-inaccessible wedding. It was someone she never would have invited in a million years if she actually thought she would come. I made it work, but it was difficult.
10) Consider an elopement. Eloping doesn’t have to mean just you and your future spouse — anything with less than 10 people total counts as an elopement in my book. Invite your parents, his parents, and each of your best friends and their significant others. Or skip friends altogether and just invite your families. Or keep it to the two of you and surprise everybody with an email containing your wedding photo from the islands! You can always have a reception or party at a later date at home and, if you want to spend a little more money, bring back a video of your special moment to share with everybody else. Just remember, in this economy, sometimes it’s better to spend less. And some of your friends and family may thank you for not putting an undue financial burden on them at a difficult time. Remember, this is about you and your future spouse, not about anybody else. The big party can be fun, but at the end of the day, everything you’re doing should be about building a solid foundation for your future together.
Okay, that’s it for now, back to work! Until next time, happy wedding planning from Weddings in Vieques or Weddings in Culebra!
Sandy