The Guest List -- Part Three

We set aside time in April, ten months before The Day, to get together with the groom’s family and discuss the guest list. Because we’re all good friends we included dinner and made an evening of it. I collected the names and addresses of the groom’s family and friends from his mother and took notes on those for whom she didn’t have addresses so we wouldn’t forget to follow-up. My goal was to get the name and current address of each guest with proper spelling of both name and address. Correct zip codes are important too.

If the families of the bride and groom are separated by a great distance this step could be done by phone or email. No matter how it’s done, it’s very important to give the groom’s family plenty of time to come up with their portion of the guest list. This means you will need to make more than one phone call and send more than one email. Be sure to make a folder in your email where you can keep all the invitation information separate from your regular email. I suggest you do this well before you plan to mail out “save the dates” because it may take several weeks to track down certain folks.

I bought 3x5 lined index cards and an inexpensive card file box in which to put them. This small box would be the nerve center of the guest list and invitations for many months to come.

High tech record keeping device

I printed the names and addresses of our guests on 1” x 2-5/8” mailing labels and stuck them to the index cards. For families I wrote the names of each young family member we were inviting to the right of their parents' address label. Next, I wrote “save the date”, “invitation”, and “RSVP” on each card. Then, I put the cards in alphabetical order in the box. Any card that didn’t have an address was put in front of the others until I got an address, then they were filed with the others. The cards ended up looking like this:

Each task was checked off as we did them. I made dividers for “RSVP” and “Regrets” and when someone replied to our invitation, we checked off RSVP, wrote the number of guests expected in the upper right hand corner of the card, and filed it behind the “RSVP” tab. If the number was “0” we put the card behind the “Regrets” tab. This card system was backed up on spreadsheets on our computers.

Not every bride is going to want to use index cards like we did. She may use whatever method of record keeping suits her best. The card box suited us because both my daughter and I had easy access to it and it was more portable than a computer. No matter which of us received a response, we could easily update the card file without having to log on, print out, or what have you. At the end of the week we would update the spreadsheets from the card file.

After the wedding, I handed my daughter the box and suggested she add two more lines to each card for checking off: Gift and Thank You Note.