Wedding Guest List Template
With countless pieces of advice out there on how to budget for your wedding day, one thing we don’t see discussed enough if at all, is how to treat your guest list with the scrutiny and precision you place on your wedding vendor team. I know this sounds a little callus and cold, but at the end of the day there is a financial or spacial limit to how many guests we can host before we push the boundaries of budget and space too far and you find yourself compromising far more than you ever envisioned.
So, why is this delicate balance so important?
We coach couples time and time again to understand the reality and power their guest list holds over their entire wedding day and planning. Your guest list will determine the cost of EVERYTHING on your wedding day. It will impact your flowers, food and beverage, stationery, rentals, transportation anything your guests interact with or experience will be affected by your guest list. With this reality, it’s important to build your guest list strategically and with the big picture in mind. I am going to give you the best template I can to help you ensure that you are creating a guest list that will allow you to curate a wedding day that is rooted in healthfully balanced expectations.
1 – The math
To begin we will need your total wedding budget. If you haven’t already established your budget, head over to this post where we break down the pillars to consider when building your wedding budget, and then come back when you have that financial comfort zone readily on hand.
Now, when looking at our guest list and pinning it up against our budget we have to do a little math. As I mentioned previously, your guest count will dictate the overall cost of about 85% of your vendor team. Because of this, we have a very simple equation that can help you determine what your ideal guest count should be based on your overall budget and expectations.
The formula you will want is simple
Total budget / minimum spend per guest = total number of guests you can comfortably support.
Now to get the minimum spend per guest you will absolutely need to involve a wedding planner OR do as much research on your local micro market as possible (this information may not be readily available though). Because every market is different from the next there is no real universal number that I can give you, however, a local/regional wedding planner will be able to provide this estimate for you easily due to the nature of our business. To round out this example I’ll plug in what we coach our Coastal Virginia brides through when working through their healthy guest count number.
For us, there are two numbers. One is the base number when our venue supports their base needs. By this, I mean that they provide all the indoor space needed, tables, chairs, linens, and no need for tenting. When we have a venue like this we recommend, on average, that a couple expect to spend 400/500 per guest at a minimum. For venues where we need to essentially “build-out” these needs we up that by 100 per guest at a minimum.
So if we have a wedding budget of 60,000 our equations could look as follows:
60,000 / 500 = 120 – For a venue with base inclusions and no tenting needed
60,000 / 600 =100 – For a venue where we need to “build-out” these inclusions
When you do this simple math at the beginning of your guest list creation it will give you a hard baseline to work off of and refine which leads us to our next step!
2 – Creating your guest list
Now it’s time for the potentially challenging part, building the guest list and seeing where you are in relation to that financially optimal guest count.
The first thing you will need to do is grab a copy of our wedding guest list template!
At this point you don’t need to start worrying about addresses, we just need to focus on names. Each of you individually will then want to file your guests into three categories. Immediate family, extended family, and friends. Then, go to town and list everyone you individually would like to invite.
Once you have finished you could take it one step further and highlight guests that are a nonnegotiable addition to the final guest list, and those that are flexible.
Now that you have your lists ready to review I highly recommend opening a bottle of wine and making a fun evening out of it. Start filling in your master list with all of your nonnegotiable guests first. Once those are in place, see where that puts you in relation to your optimal guest count.
If you are under, begin to add guests that were marked as “flexible” as you see fit, OR if you are comfortable with the list as it stands know you can reallocate some funds to vendor priorities!
If you find that after your nonnegotiable guests have both been added you are already over your optimal guest count you have a harder conversation to have. You then need to decide if you can trim your list any further, determine if you have any additional funding (a safety net if you will) that you could add to your total budget to bump up your optimal guest count threshold, or the third option of adjusting your vision and vendor quality to accommodate the additional guest load.
This part of the wedding planning process is not glamorous and can be challenging, but believe me it will save you from much greater discomfort later on down the road! There is no such thing as a small wedding budget but there is such a thing as having an unbalanced budget to expectation ratio. My sincere hope is that you take this advice to heart and set yourself and your expectations up for success as you begin planning your wedding!
As always, if you are in the coastal Virginia and surrounding areas and are looking for a planner or simply have a quick question you can always email me or head to our website to schedule a consultation call today!
