Making a guest list is one of the first things to do when planning your wedding, and in reality, how many people you can afford to invite will decide who is on your final list and who is not. Figuring out your final guest list is not that difficult.

The first step to any wedding is setting a budget. The next is sitting down with your fiancé and deciding what kind of wedding you want to have. Do you want small and intimate or do you want to invite everyone you have even known? If your budget allows for it and your beloved does not object, invite the whole gang, but if not follow these steps to make your guest list manageable and affordable.

Take a pen and a piece of paper and list out everyone you want at your wedding. Have your fiancé do the same and put the lists together. If your parents are helping you pay for your wedding, ask them who they would like to invite too and add those people to your list.

If this number is unmanageable in any way, cross out the people you have not talked to in a year, the people you work with but never see way from the office, and relatives you have never met. If this gets your list down to a manageable number, start printing the wedding invitations.

If not, look for the invites you are sending out just because you were invited to their wedding. Maybe consider not inviting children, it makes a family of four suddenly become half that. Be careful with that one, you may insult your invitees and end up with a much smaller wedding than you were originally planning on.

If this does not cut your guest list down to a manageable number, then you may want to stick with immediate family and close, personal friends. An intimate wedding may be more fun than a large wedding.

Cutting your guest list down to what you can afford is not difficult. With some thought and planning you can do this without insulting any person who thought they should be invited. And if anyone says that they expected an invitation, you can always say that you wanted to but finances were tight, so you just could not. Everyone understands that money can be an issue.

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