It’s been a trying week (and it’s only Wednesday!) as our invitations arrived on Monday and we dove headfirst into adding all the little touches, stuffing, and addressing in the short time we have before they’re expected to be in the mail.  Putting these together means we are cracking down on our final guest list.

Ah yes, the guest list.  It is basically the bane of my (and many others, I know) wedding existence.  When we got engaged we were on a cruise and over dinner one night, we rattled off all the people we’d invite- people from college we hadn’t spoken to in years, old professors, people we were close with from online communities, all of our work friends, etc.  We were so excited and we reasoned that with all these people, we probably had about 70, maybe 80 people to invite.  Oh what a small adorable wedding it will be!

Ha.  HA.  HA HA HA HA HA.  We were so naive.  When we got home from our cruise, I went to the store to get myself a wedding notebook.  I sat down and wrote at the top in fancy letters “Guest List – First Draft, 11-1-09″  I was so excited.  I began with family and the wedding party.  When I was done with that, I was at 72.  OMG!  72 people in our extended families and wedding party!  When did this happen??  “It’s okay,” I tell myself, “It’s just a first draft.  Push on.”  When I was finished I had 136 people.  I was bowled over.  This was way outside our ideal 70-80 person wedding.  Still, I reasoned that a good chunk of these people wouldn’t come and figured this was an okay place to be.  I’d definitely whittle it down to around 100-115 and we’d be perfectly fine.

Then the parents came in.  To be fair, I will say that there is a major emphasis on parent here as my mother was by far the biggest culprit.  Just before our Save the Dates went out, we asked the parents for their guest list.  We had covered all the bases with Ritchie’s family mostly, his mom added maybe 2 or 4 people.  But all the while she told us to take people off more than she asked us to put people on.  Enter my mother.  Queen of indecision (and I wonder where I get it from).  First she added about 16 people.  It was a blow, but I held strong.  Then she called and took 4 or so off.  Then she called and added 2 back, but took another 2 off.  It went like this for weeks.  She would call and start off with, “Jess don’t be mad…” and I knew it was about the guest list.  Often these conversations went “So and so was like a father to you growing up,” or, “Well, I haven’t talked to so and so in years.”  After I sent out our Save the Dates, it continued to happen.  “But I already sent out our Save the Dates!” “Oh, that doesn’t matter.  I talked to so and so the other day and she said she’d be very hurt if we didn’t invite her.”  Sigh.  I know this is pretty normal from parents, but I’m fairly certain that it’s normal from parents who are paying for the wedding.  While our parents are picking up a few of the tabs, we are paying for the majority of this shindig ourselves.  Every guest that is added a little “Ka-ching, ka-ching!” goes off in my head (the second ka-ching is for the inevitable plus one).  But then again, we’re doing it ourselves too.  Recently I had been back in touch with a close college friend who I really wanted to include on our day, so I added her (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  Ritchie reconnected with an old friend of his, so we added him (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  In the past few months we’ve befriended and become pretty close with our new neighbors (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  The guests continued to add up and before we knew it, we’d added at least 10 people since we’d sent out our Save the Dates ((ka-ching, ka-ching! ka-ching, ka-ching! ka-ching, ka-ching!).  And of course, all the while, my mom was remembering and taking off people.  I’ve gotten to the point where I literally have one invitation left, which is for our dang scrapbook DANGIT.  If one gets lost in the mail, or more unforeseen circumstances happen, I’m screwed.  As of today’s post we are now up to, brace yourself, 144 people.

It’s tough.  At some point, we had a kind of “eff it” attitude towards our guest list figuring we had so many out of towners that adding people wouldn’t really affect our outcome.  But now that people are starting to book rooms, people we never expected to make the trip, we’re getting a little nervous.  We’re doing the math in our head and we’ve only really budgeted and planned for around 100 people.  We never thought we’d get more than that.  And yet, it’s such a dilemma as we want every invited guest to be there.

So a lot lies on these little invitation’s shoulders.  Those tiny little RSVP postcards hold our fate in their hands.  I can’t wait to release them into the world and see what they come back with.  I’m excited and terrified all at the same time.

Are you terrified of your guest list?  Stuck with an indecisive parent like mine?  Excited about sending out your invites, but afraid to get your RSVPs back?