Something that came up often just before my wedding was the issue of people I saw regularly that were not invited. It always bothered me how personal people took their lack of invite when I wasn't super emotionally invested in it myself. Because of how anxious and less than enthusiastic I was about having a big wedding, my husband and I created a criteria for the guest list.
It had nothing to do with how much we loved certain people more than others but more so to do with logistical planning, realistic expectations, and was ultimately who invested in us and our wedding.
I hope that if it was my wedding or that of a friend you can understand that the guest list isn't an attack. It is the bride and groom doing their best to include as many people as they can while maintaining a budget, peace, and wanting to give back to so many people. It is almost never a discussion on people not to invite so much as who all can possibly be invited.
If you weren't invited, it is probably due to large families, a small budget, or genuine concern that it is too much to ask. The few people that were discussed as being specifically not invited were people that not only had nothing to do with my daily life, but also made a point to remove themselves from it through their words and actions.
The first groups we figured out was family. My husband has the larger in-tact side between us. This meant his grandparents, his immediate family, his mom's siblings with their spouses, and their children. The cousins were all invited to bring their significant others. Then it was his more extended family and the children and spouses that go with them. This was the second wedding for this group together, so it was pretty easy.
My family was not so easy as there were many family members that logistically or another reason could never come. This included my 90 year old abuela and many of my mom's siblings. The family has been a little drama filled over the last few decades so it came down to two of my mom's sisters and one of my cousins that represented their side. My Dad's side isn't around much, so that was easy. His best friend since 4th grade with his wife and two kids represented my dad's family.
The next bit of family I chose to include my birth mom, her husband, and my brother and sister. Being raised an only child hearing about the importance of having siblings in the wedding, my little brother and sister was a no-brainer. The love I have for those two is like nothing else I have ever experienced! I chose not to include my paternal birth family for reasons that don't need to be laid out to the world, but it has to do with my personal belief that the kids didn't need to ask questions they are too young to understand the answers.
So then we discussed friends. With a guest limit in mind and nearly 60 guests already on the list, we came up with some rules to keep the guest list as short as we could. The first rule was that all friends invited had to be mutual friends of my husband and me. I am very overwhelmed by new people and this helped me feel comfortable in a room of people focus on us.The second rule was no exes. I really dislike drama. This was just a good rule more than a way to shorten the list.
The third rule was that the vast majority of friends had to have a job in the wedding. With so many college age friends we didn't want to pressure a wedding gift and were more than thrilled to have them add their part to our wedding day experience. This group really did add that special something to the whole day worth so much more than any physical gift.
From here, we started our friend list. We decided on the jobs we needed done and assigned a friend. We added the bridal party with their significant others, children, and parents. Next was the musicians with their appropriate significant others.
We looked at the other people that were also helping or contributing to the wedding as well as people that helped us at school. This added more school friends and a few friends' families. We added a few local friends that we have known since before college and that made up the friends on the guest list. Very few friends played a passive guest role and the ones that did had been a part of my and my husband's lives so long that they were practically family.
Professors were the last group we talked about. My husband graduated right before the wedding. We went back and forth but decided that after five years with the same group of music faculty, they were an appropriate group to invite. Since I won't graduate until the following semester, we chose not to invite my professors as I will be continuing to work under them as a student.
In total, we had a small wedding of under one hundred people. We were actually two seats short at the reception so my brother and sister sat at the sweetheart table with my husband and I. The reality is that there are a good dozen people I wish we could have invited had the venue and budget allowed. There are other awesome friends that would have been great to have take part in our special day. The people we did get to spend the day with are some of the people that have invested in us the most over the years.
The wedding was more about my husband and me promising before God that we will be there for each other until "death us do part". It was also about how Jesus died innocently to save us from sin, death, and the devil.
The people that were there to witness and celebrate that salvation and our promise to each other was only the representation of God's gift of friendship and human relationships. They weren't the definitive list of people that matter to us. It wasn't about any individual at the event, not even my husband or I. For the same reason it wasn't about you. If you want to feel included in the wedding you weren't invited to, odds are, the bride and groom will share with their stories and many of the pictures they have. You just have to ask.
