The personal politics involved in who to invite to your wedding can be a minefield. First, start with a master list. This includes all the people you think you should invite, are thinking about inviting or whose wedding you attended within the past two years. Then start cutting.
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Inviting guests to your wedding
Things to keep in mind include:
- If your parents are helping to pay for the wedding and want to invite some friends you don’t know, you should consider adding them on the list. If the bride’s family is paying for the wedding, her family should have more sway in who’s invited. If the bride and the groom are paying for the wedding themselves, share invites equally.
- “Plus ones” can drive up both the number of guests and the cost of your wedding. When it comes to “plus ones”, people in your wedding party should be able to bring a guest, but otherwise if you haven’t met the person’s significant other, or heard much about them, then don’t feel obligated to invite them.
- Don’t invite people who are essentially friends of friends - those you only see at other people’s events.
- If you’re wondering which work colleagues to invite, think about if you’d still be close if you left your job tomorrow. If the job is the only thing you have in common, don’t invite them.
- If someone has never met your future spouse, don’t invite them. Your wedding day is not for those sort of introductions.
- Think about your relationship with this person in a few years - do you think you’ll still be friends, or will you think, “Who is that and why were they were at my wedding!”
- For anyone else left on the list, think about how they’d be at a table. Will they make small talk easily with strangers? Or will they heckle speechmakers and drink the bar dry? The decision is yours.