Don't Tell the Groom: The guest list of doom has got out of hand

I started off saying I wanted a ‘VERY small wedding’ with only the extremely near and dear of our nearest and dearest in attendance. Ideally under 50 people in total.

I’m now struggling to keep the ceremony guest list below 100 and we’re stumped for venues we can afford. Because now I want EVERYONE to be able to come. Things have got out of hand.

If you thought this blog would help foster the belief that getting married without a fuss and a fortune is possible, I’m afraid I may be about to let you down.

It all began with the first vicious cycle of wedding planning.

This goes: Choose the type of ceremony you want, but remember this affects what venue you can have, which depending on its capacity gives you a guest list limit. So the size of your guest list might mean you have to pick a different kind of ceremony to get a big enough venue...

As we’re not in the slightest bit religious it would feel hypocritical to get married in a church, so we’re going civil. This means we can either get married in the registry office (which has rooms that fit a max of about 50 people) or a private venue.

Private venues really bloody expensive. But they are bigger.

But we can’t afford it.

But they are bigger.

[Don't Tell the Groom: Why the OTT proposal is a bit icky]
[Don't Tell the Groom: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bling]

Guest list politics

We could go down the ‘family only’ route but as we’re pushing/well into our 30s we’ve spent almost as long living with our mates as with our mums, so there are a lot of close friends we consider family, who we’d like to be with us for this momentous occasion.

And as we’re in our 30s, most of our friends have long-term partners (married or not) and a few have children. And we can’t invite half a family can we?

Then there’s extended family. We may never see most of them, but isn’t that the whole point of weddings and funerals? You get to see your relatives from afar and they get to be a part of the key moments in your life. I have a band of 20-odd relatives in Australia who I hardly ever see so a mass invite will be winging its way across the waters in a few months time, on the off-chance they fancy a visit to the motherland.

Ceremony, reception or both?

The ceremony is the point of the whole day. The marriage is the thing we’re celebrating, the vows are what we want witnessed by the people who love us and who will be there for us as we navigate the rocky roads of marriage in the years to come. So in that case, the more the merrier right?

Free passes go to immediate family, the Best Man, the Best Woman, the band and reciprocal invites to friends who’ve already taken the plunge.

The rest is a free-for-all. And I’m at the point of wondering if we remove seats and make everyone stand can we get more in?

The reception is surprisingly causing less of a headache. My parents live in the country and have a decent-sized garden, which I have begged to use (and most likely re-turf) for the celebrations.

Somewhat dubiously they agreed, so we don’t have to worry about a cost-per-head and health and safety rules. We do have to worry about absolutely everything else though so I can look forward to the skull-crumbling panic that will ensue during that organisational phase.

Forgetting perfect

None of this would matter if I didn’t care that much about getting married or if I didn’t want a wedding at all. But clearly I do, or I wouldn’t be trying to get everything right (which is, I know, an unrealistic goal). I’ve been to some fabulous, beautiful weddings big and small and the ones I’ve loved are the ones that feel authentic to the couple involved.

Despite my competitive streak our wedding is never going to be the biggest, the swishest or ‘the best’, we don’t have the funds or the organisational nouse for that. But one thing that’s important to me is ditching as many of the things we’re traditionally ‘supposed to do’ as we can, to make sure it’s more our wedding than a cookie-cutter version.

And there’s nothing that’s more ‘us’ than the people who come, who will make the whole thing. Adam has put his foot down and insisted we do whatever we can to ensure everyone we want, and who wants, to be there for the whole day can be, even if other things have to be sacrificed.

So predictably, we are now considering those pricy venues we’d never have dreamt about a few months ago. But then something else I’m discovering about weddings: throw enough money at your problem and it goes away. 

Here’s hoping we can replace ‘money’ with ‘credit cards’ in that sentence. I don’t suppose they’re looking for volunteers for Don’t Tell The Bride at the moment?

Catch up on last week's Don't Tell the Groom in which Kim pondered the possibility of fake-tanning her fiance and tune in next week for the Joyous Discovery of the Wedding Spreadsheet.