I have underestimated the stress impact of a guest list. I didn't know this tiny little list that we have would give us so much grief and stress.
We are planning two weddings. Civil wedding here in the U.S. and church wedding in the Philippines. At the back of your head you maybe thinking: "why two weddings, you squandering idiots". I'll tell you why. First, because it would be less civil requirements in the Philippines if we get married civilly first before the church wedding. Time is of essential to us. The less time we need to spend in the Philippines to take care of wedding requirements, the more time we have to go beach hopping! Second, because the hubby's family cannot all go to the Philippines' wedding so the civil wedding is like a tribute for the hubby's family.
Now, let's go back to this semi-sensitive issue called the G-list. Since we're planning two weddings we have to watch out our expenses, which means we have to limit the number of guests and that limit is 40. The other constraint is, because Peter Shields is small and even though it can accomodate up to 100 guests we don't want to start displacing guests by having them seat at the other side of the wall (for those who've been to Peter Shields Inn, you know what I mean). So we decided to stick to 40.Since the civil wedding is really the "hubby's wedding", his family and close friends are the priority and I am supposed to invite just those people who are part of the wedding party and/or my relatives in Canada. The only time I can invite extra on my side is when guests from our priority list declined our invitation.
Simple enough right?
No.
Because some in our priority list didn't RSVP right away and because of that we had to wait and wait until we realized we only have a month left before the wedding. We were able to send out our second wave of invitations alright but because it's just a month before the wedding our second priority guests got insulted and thought they were just "panakip butas" (filler) and declined our invitation. But what can you do? You can't expect people to just drop whatever they're plans are just to celebrate the most important event in bob and I's life as a couple. Our invitees are all special to us but we can't expect that to be mutual. Sure, some have valid excuses, but some you'll know right away if they're just making fake excuses not to go.
Now, we can live with that. The other worst part of managing your guest list is when you have guests who are 50-50 and can't really give you a straight yes or no answer. We have that situation and they sent us their final answer two weeks before the wedding. Yep, this is right after we submitted our headcounts and guests' meal preference to Peter Shields. Ofcourse we just let it go. No big deal. They have priorities. The only problem is since it's two weeks before the wedding we can't invite anymore because that's when would-be guests would really start feeling offended because it would be too obvious that they are at the bottom of our list. You're right, maybe we should give them more credit than that and I'm sure those who have planned a wedding know the deal about priority list but we didn't risk it.
Ofcourse there's this business about doing the seating arrangement that also messes up everything when guests RSVPs right away or they cancel late. But I won't talk about that anymore. That deserves a separate blog, lol.
Anyway, but there's a prequel to this G-list thingie. The hubby and I were fighting over who'll make it to the second priority list. I mean, it's no brainer who needs to be in our A-list, it's the second priority list that's actually trickier.
Cause you see, we have to strategically invite our guests. We need to make sure that if we invite, say, couple A, there wouldn't be another couple in couple A's circle (that we are friends with too) who'll feel left behind. We want to make sure that the couple we invited won't trigger a domino effect that now we also need to invite, couples X, Y and Z so we won't offend them and they won't think we have favoritism. This is the reason why we didn't invite anyone from our work. Although we only have a few close friends at work but if we invite one of them, we have to invite coworker 2 and 3 and 4 and 5, and my list could go on and on, just so we won't offend anyone from that circle. To avoid that, we just simply didn't invite anyone from that circle. Also, that way we were able to contain our tiny headcount limit.
The hubby and I also had to argue over who gets a plus 1 and who doesn't. Man, that's one tricky item too, so what we came up with was, if they're not married there won't be any plus 1s unless if the unmarried couple is really serious. Basically all single guests don't have plus one's.
I’m getting a migraine just remembering all those stressful nights so I’m stopping here.
Here’s my one advise though, do not overthink. If you’re 50-50 about inviting that person, then do NOT invite him/her. You are paying for this wedding not them, so you have the upper hand.
How about those taking forever to RSVP, don’t be shy to call them. Tell them you have to call the caterer tomorrow and you need the headcount today.
Good luck. You can do this!!
