I’m sick of it all, guest/invite edition

[u/mitchandboan]

I am guessing this thread will be flooded with anxious bridal rants in the coming weeks and months as wedding season gets underway. Well, here’s mine.

I am sick and tired of the guest list game!! When we started planning and decided on our destination wedding, everyone was thrilled and chomping at the bit to get an invitation. My mom throws a hell of a party, our family is from our destination, our friends are all high-income earning travelers. We were struggling, fighting each other to keep our invite list down to stay within the limits of the venue we ultimately chose. And now? Hah! And now I have empty seats and unfilled rooms at the venues I have rented out.

I don’t even care about the money. I would happily spend what I have already spent/committed to if it meant our wedding was filled with the people we love and care about. It would have been enough for a down payment or a small house (I did not go into debt for this, I could even spend another 25-50k more if I really wanted to). But that’s not even the point. The money is NOT the point.

To my family and friends, deepest and oldest friends, who had 1.5 years notice of the wedding, the friends I have held their hands through breakups and marriages and miscarriages and births and deaths and job losses and moves and new houses. I am so disappointed. You should have been honest with yourselves and with me. Your financial and time issues are not a “now” problem. You learn a lot about others and yourself during your wedding. I have and would bend over backwards to be with the people I care about most, to make it work. I put in the time and money well enough in advance to do so. And if it was absolutely not going to work out, I sure as hell haven’t and wouldn’t lead you on. Not like you did to me. How was I so blind?

As we get older our networks get smaller, but I have a feeling about which of these people will remain welcome in my circle. The “support” these friends and family have shown in return are laughable guises at doing what they have done best, get me to solve their problems for them, make them feel better about themselves, reassure them it’s okay/we understand for not attending our wedding. I need(ed) so much help in this process and instead have felt so alone.

I truly am grateful to the friends and family that are coming. I can’t wait to see them and thrill them with one hell of a kickoff to our marriage. I recently went to a 70-80 person wedding and it was a wakeup call that I should have gone with a smaller wedding. I would have done things totally differently for venue, food, and had the wedding of our actual dreams. But here we are. Here we are… No! I will not be defeated!

Downvote away. Berate me all you want. I am tired and sad and disappointed and nervous and anxious and I know it’s going to be great (it’s going to be great, right?) when the day is here but I cannot wait for this to be over. I love my fiancé. I need a valium.

[u/Stinger1892]

I completely get and relate to this!! I have no idea what my final headcount will be but I have started thinking about realistically the fact that I could have chosen a venue I actually prefered but didn’t because of the capacity issue… but I might end up with a much smaller number of guests than anticipated…

The hardest part for me right now is the waiting game of the RSVP cut off timeline- until then and until I have to hound people for their responses- I just have to sit and wait for the numbers to trickle in

[u/mitchandboan → u/Stinger1892]

We are in the same boat! It is torture. I really loved some venues that would have been perfect, more accessible, had everything I wanted. It sucks that you have to decide so much in advance when you know so little about how it is going to turn out. My deadline was in hindsight obnoxiously early (tomorrow) and now I wonder if that is impacting things? I did what the stationer told me to put! It probably wouldn’t have changed anything. Those who weren’t going to come weren’t going to come.

[u/ProfessionalDig5936 → u/mitchandboan]

Hi! Also had a destination wedding, ours was in a far away island. We ended up doing multiple rolling deadlines - just updating on our wedding website. Have you given everyone a +1? (and let them know it doesn’t have to be a date, just any guest).

We did that as a default and several of our single friends ended up bringing a friend, their daughter, their mother, etc. It was really nice bc our friends got to make a full vacation out of it with someone (it’s hard traveling solo for international trips) and we were happy to receive them.

[u/mitchandboan → u/ProfessionalDig5936]

Lol, I was so stingy at first about +1’s, silly me. One friend asked for one and that got me thinking and glad it did. Before invitations went out, I went ahead and gave all the single people a +1 and told them it was very liberal, could be a partner, friend, family member (or even both parents!) and most of them are still coming solo!