The Dream List

Our bride-to-be starts to compile a guest list for her Big Day.

By Sara Cardace

I've finally gotten all the various lists together and the master list is starting to take shape. My ever-organized parents compiled a handy-dandy excel spreadsheet of what we're calling their "dream list" -- basically everyone they'd like to invite if there were no limitations on the head count. Their number came to about 50. Not too bad...

I was a bit worried about getting the dream-list from John's parents -- they're not big e-mailers -- but luckily his mother came to town last week with their list in tow. Her number came out to about 50 as well. (I'm sort of shocked that everyone's keeping their guest lists so modest...I've heard about 9203940387 horror stories from my married friends about their parents' unsupportable guest lists and am sooo thankful that our families are keeping things reasonable!)

Add that to the list that John and I came up with -- about 75 people all told -- and the total was a not-too-scary-sounding 170. But then I suddenly realized that I had no idea what the exact capacity at our venue was.  (How did I make it this far without having that number stamped on my brain!? Good grief!) I checked in with Darius, the wonderful event planner at our venue Landmark on the Park, and turns out that 175 is the exact number of people he thinks will work comfortably in the space. (Phew.)

I'm told that I can expect a good 20 percent of my invitees not to be able to make it, which would work out perfectly -- but can anyone confirm that that's actually the case? Guidance/anecdotes/horror stories much appreciated, as always!

And now that the guest list is marginally under control (totally not looking forward to doing the seating assignments -- argh), I'm getting excited to hit those two gown appointments I mentioned last week. I'll make sure to bring my camera along to document the proceedings so all the readers of this blog can give me their (hopefully not too harsh) feedback. Fingers crossed!