Enjoy today’s post by Janet Mitchell: “I am the mother of a 21 year old college senior, currently assisting with planning her wedding and (mostly) loving every minute of it!”

Photo by Abigail Criner Photography; Waco, Texas

For all future M.O.B.s — listen up!

For my birthday last May, right after my daughter got engaged, she gave me an Emily Post Etiquette/Planner book for the Mother of the Bride or Groom. In it, (and in most every wedding website I looked at) I read that almost as soon as the engagement is announced, all the parties need to sit down and discuss the guest list. Did I listen? Of course not…!! I figured it would all work itself out in the end…after all the bride-to-be was looking at the wedding planning books and websites, too, right?!! So I assumed she had a pretty good idea of the standard ways of dividing the list up. First Lesson of Wedding Planning — Never Assume Anything!

About 6 weeks into the engagement, my Dear Hubby and I were taking a road trip and to help pass the time, we decided to work on our portion of the wedding guest list — i.e. the family that HAD to get invited, and then a few friends and more distant family that we would like to include in the festivities. At this point, my daughter and her fiancé were “guestimating” a total guest list of around 150.

The etiquette advice had this to say– usually, the division of guests goes like this:

Option 1 – 1/3 to the Bride’s Family’s Side, 1/3 to the Groom’s Family’s Side, and 1/3 friends of the couples’ choice.

Option 2 – 50% to the couples’ friends, and 25% each to each family. (This is more likely if the couple is older and they have lived on their own for a while, and the couple is paying for the wedding.)

So, my hubby and I had gone upon the 1/3 of the 150 guest scenario to come up with our own tentative list of 45 to 50 people.

A few days later, my future Son-in-Law happened to be visiting and the couple told us they had been working on setting up a spreadsheet of the guest list; so I figured it was time to show them what my hubby and I had come up with for our part. When I handed over our list, they both had a panic-stricken look on their face, and I figured something was up. My daughter told me privately later that day, that they had gotten up to 200 guests total on their latest version, and approximately 20 of them were our family members, and 20 were his family members, and 160 were their friends! I am talking about 20 persons, not 20 families. In other words, just the immediate family was all that we were going to be able to invite. No extra room for more distant relatives, or family friends.

So the couple’s proposed “percentages” worked out more like this: 80% of the guest list was their friends, and each set of parents was left with 10% of the guest spaces.

Our venue people were telling us that it only holds 180 people comfortably with a dance floor, 200 bodies would actually be pushing it – so we couldn’t just add on to the number of guests. (Not to mention the cost — we had already gone from 150 guests to 200!) And there just aren’t that many places in Waco, Texas that hold more than 200, at least not at an affordable price.

Well, since my husband and I are paying for the majority of this wedding, this bombshell the couple dropped about the division of the list did not sit well with us at all. To top it off, the bride and groom misunderstood and thought that we were (unfairly) asking to invite a lot more people than the groom’s family was allowed to. It was a tense few days.

We let a week or so go by so everyone could all calm down, and then I had to send my daughter a long email, apologizing for rocking the boat, but basically explaining where we were coming from. We never had any intention of inviting more than the groom’s family — we actually thought they should be able to invite more as well. We thought that the couple somehow needed to cut down their friend list. We understand that they are very active in their college and their church, and have a wide social circle, and it is hard to invite some and not others, but that is what they needed to look at doing.

We explained that this is the biggest party her Dad and I will probably ever throw, and that in addition to the immediate family, there were also some other relatives and friends we wanted to invite that had watched her grow up and who we knew would want to be there if they could. On the other hand, we acknowledged that this is their wedding, and we wanted to abide by their wishes as much as possible.

So the “compromise” came in — they cut down their list so that we could invite 10 or so more people. It turned out the groom’s family were fairly satisfied with the number they had already. So now we have approximately 15% of the guest list for our side.

Meanwhile, we visited the venue one day when they happened to be set up for a large wedding. It appears that we theoretically could go maybe 10 to 20 guests over the 200 limit. (A few tables would have to be out in the foyer, however, and not the main reception room.) And considering you will usually not get 100% attendance of your invitees, it is do-able.

So yes — the guest list, and most importantly the division of it, is about THE most crucial aspect of wedding planning, and needs to be decided upon right away. We actually got it backwards — we should have settled on the count before settling on a venue. Of course in our case, we had already booked about the largest venue we could get in that vicinity, so we were kind of stuck anyway.

Once the guest list and how it will be divided is decided on, it clears the air, the couple and both families have a clearer picture of what the wedding will look like, and you can move on with the rest of the planning. And if you choose to send out Save the Dates (as we did), the guest list must be decided on very soon in the ballgame!

You can read more by Janet on her blog: My First Daughter’s Wedding