We just passed the four month mark before the big day. It is making me a little nervous, because for some reason three months until the wedding seems a lot closer than four. Last week I looked at our timeline and realized that our unfinished guest list is staring me in the face. My hesitancy to produce the final list has come as a result of some decision-making issues. Let me explain. Beyond our list of definite invites, there is a group of “indefinites” (for lack of a better word). These are friends we were once close to, yet, we have drifted apart from either physically or emotionally: childhood friends, high school friends, college friends, friends from old jobs. Well, you get the picture. We are on the fence about inviting many of these people. On the one hand, they have been significant people to us at certain times in our lives. On the other hand, these are not people that we interact with every day. A friendly note via Facebook, an email, or running into them at a social gathering is just about the extent of communication.
Where do you draw the line as to which friends get an invite and which don’t? We have some room on our guest list. Not a lot, but some. I feel conflicted because several of my future in-laws’ friends will probably get an invite (don’t get me started on this subject), and we barely know a lot of them. So why then should we fail to consider old friends?
The flip side of this is that maybe some of the indefinites don’t even want to attend our wedding. I’m a realist. I understand that not everyone is banging down the door to get into our wedding, especially those we haven’t seen in awhile. I don’t want to put them in an awkward situation where they are like, “Hmmm, if we say “yes”, does that mean we have to dole out money for a gift for these people?” (Ok, I hope no one says that. But you never know…)
Do you have any indefinites on your list? Also, if an old or distant friend has invited you to their wedding did you find yourself (a) happy and honored to get the invite or (b) uncomfortable that you were invited and searching for any excuse to get out of it?
Krista
Hmm … tricky. We didn’t invite most old friends, but there were a couple. A friend since grade 2 – I don’t see her often, but she’s always been there. 5 (interesting, 4 of them split into 2 couples, so that lowers the guest count) of Wade’s friends from university who meant a lot to him. And a great-aunt I haven’t seen much of since I was 12, but when I was young I was very close to.
We kinda looked at “grand scheme of things” when deciding (which is not always easy).
Victory Bird
I totally feel you on this issue. We’re trying to keep our count down as much as possible for budget reasons, but also to create a super intimate group. We decided to be ‘forward looking’, meaning we would exclude old friends who are simply not going to be a part of our lives in the future because of natural drifting apart [mostly old college friends, and friends from the many states we inhabited as children]. I want to still be close to everyone in our photos when I’m old and grey!
Our second ‘rule’ was to consider if we’d actually call them up to hang out this weekend. Really would we?
Also, will they feel connected to the group at your wedding? My fiancé’s bff from high school won’t know a soul except us, but he’s super comfortable being the life of the party. My bff from middle school on the other hand, not so much.
LauraAnn
We ran into the same situation but I think we handled each friend separately. We looked at the reasons why we hadn’t really talked to them lately (was it because they moved, did we just drift apart, etc). If it was someone that we would like to call up and hang out with but maybe couldn’t due to distance than we invited them. Hope that helps!
Newport Nuptials
We are in the same boat. We are waiting on a lot of friends until we send the invites out. We would like to have an intimate wedding, which isn’t really possible with the size of our families.
So we aren’t sure which friends to invite. We have many college friends who were there for us in the begining of our relatioship, whom we have grown apart from.
We are waiting to decide. It is tough and I’m not sure how to decide. I’d like ot see what you end up going with!
On the other hand, I am always honored when I am invited to an old friend’s wedding. If budget isn’t an issue and you have the room and want to invite them and the only thing holding you back is tehir reaction, I wouldn’t worry about it. I think people truly do feel honored. It is sometimes a great way to say, even though we aren’t as close as before, you are/were still a significant person in my life and I’d like to share this day with you.
Good luck on the decision!
-J.Darling
Weddings are funny creatures. No matter what you do, you will hurt someone’s feelings or offend someone else. It really is just par for the course. I would say invite the peope you really WANT there. To those you are on the fence about, send a nice announcement with a photo afterwards. Getting something in the mail will make them feel special, and you can always claim “size restrictions” if they comment about not being invited. If offended, they will generally get over it given time.
So why not make a “must-have” list and an “announcement” list?