the guest list.....

the guest list.

the mere mention of it makes my head want to explode.  no single thing about the wedding so far has caused me as much stress as the thought of sitting down and realistically making a guest list has.  at first i thought "wow, this will be easy" - i mean, we can seat 200 people in our ceremony venue - in fact i remember thinking that 200 people sounded like a lot of freaking people to me, and i even thought "im going to be so humiliated when i cant even come up with 200 people to put in this place!"  but then one day, very casually in the car, mom and i started writing down names and before i knew it, over half of the slots for invites had already been filled (and MOST of them were MY family!!!!)  i actually almost had a nervous breakdown, and called off the list making before i hyperventilated. all these thoughts were getting crossed in my brain, and i just felt... panicked.

i think of what a wedding is (traditionally) supposed to be - an intimate moment shared between two people, in front of their very nearest and dearest friends and family - some people even choose to not share the moment with anyone, and as romantic as that sounds, i've never thought the "just the two of us" route would be the right one for me when i got married - i feel like it's something i really do want to share with everyone who is special to me, and i'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to do it, and i'm very much looking forward to it - but the more i go through the mental rolodex of people i've met and dearly loved (enough to say "hey, come witness the most important day of my life!") over the last 27 years of my life, its becoming increasingly difficult for me to decide who fits into this top 200.  

what exactly is the criteria for special? there isn't one. and every person who i consider to be a friend (in any sense of the word) is dear to me in their own way,  and if i could expand the number of people i could invite to be 2 or 3 times what it is now so that there are no hurt feelings, and so that my parents can feel a little less awkward about going to the grocery store and running into someone we may have offended by not being able to invite them,  i absolutely would, but the budget and the fire marshall simply would not allow it. don't get me wrong here - i'm in no way trying to sound as if i'm miss popularity over here with so many people knocking down my door that i can't even make time in my social calendar to breathe (in fact lately its quite the opposite), but i've already seen the "if we invite ______ we have to invite ______ and _______ because....." monster rear its ugly head a few times in the last 6 months...... and don't get me started on the people who i hadn't even considered yet who have magically reappeared in my life suddenly, or people who i only feel like i kind of know who have assured me that they'll be there and how excited they are for my big day.....200 seems like such a small number now - when you really think about it, its only 100 invitations (if you're doing them all as an invitee + guest...and if they have kids you want to invite, knock a couple of more off.....) MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE, Y'ALL.

i've come up with a few methods for how to decide who to knock off the "must invite" list, but there are always loopholes in every method i come up with.   the best solution i have for the problem so far is to invite the 200 people to the ceremony, and then open the number up to the reception - this brings up the question of  "will people be offended about only being invited to the reception?" and my half serious answer is that no, they won't, because in my experience, people only really go to the wedding for the reception anyway, am i right?  in the same vein, what's the point of going to the after party if you weren't there for the "big show"????  will just getting an invite to the reception make people feel "b" list? why is this so freaking confusing?

oh crap, we're screwed.