We now have our final guest count. We had to track down a lot of people... but we finally got a hold of everyone. We invited 198 people and 158 are attending. That means only 30 people declined! We're feeling pretty loved that so many people have decided to come. We were estimating about 150, so we're a little over but not by much. We had already planned for 16 tables each seating 10 so we don't need to make any changes there. The only thing I'm a little disappointed about in our guests attending list is the amount of strangers that have made their way into our wedding...
I'm not thrilled at the thought of meeting people for the first time at our wedding. I'm not talking about some of Mr. Castles family I have never met. He will be meeting a lot of people from my family for the first time. I have a big family, 31 first cousins alone... What I'm talking about is random guests people have decided to bring. We ended up giving anyone who has a significant other a plus one. What I didn't anticipate was if their significant other couldn't come they would decide to bring a friend instead...
We have about a handful of people who fall into this category. A random friend, boyfriend, girlfriend that we didn't invite in the first place. I could go into detail but basically some of our guests chose to bring someone other than who their invitation was meant to include. Or they decided to bring a guest when they were not given a plus one. After many discussions, we've decided to just let it go. Most of the culprits are family members and we would rather not deal with the possible drama of telling someone they can't bring their guest. My Dad added his two cents saying, if we already had anticipated people bringing a plus one it's no big deal if the plus one isn't who we thought it would be.
Like I said before it's only a handful of people so it really doesn't make that big a dent in our guest list. It just seems weird to me that we will have strangers at our wedding. People who couldn't even pick our face out in a crowd. In the end it's not going to ruin my day. I'm just worried I might not be the friendliest when I meet these people... But really it's not their fault. They got invited to a wedding and thought, cool weddings are fun! I don't think I could ever go to a wedding with a friend as their date. Weddings are such a special and intimate affair. I would feel like I was eavesdropping on someones secret conversation.
In conclusion, don't be like me. If you don't want strangers at your wedding, make it a point to get your opinion heard before it's too late. If you don't know someones girlfriend or boyfriends name, find out and put it on the invite so they don't think they can bring who ever they want! Miss Dragon actually just had a great post on keeping your wedding invite list small and how to deal with guest guilt. I wish I would have followed some of her advice. But I'll get over it, by next week there will be a lot of other things on my mind!
How do you feel about having a lot of people you don't know at your wedding? Would you tell your guests they couldn't bring them, or would you let it go?
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