The Numbers Game/ah 'Budg Et'!....

The Numbers Game - you want to invite who and why???


Hey Blog World.

Saturday me and my favorite man in the world decided to take our first wedding field trip…*WFT*

He seems to think it is early planning (which in a way, yes 15 months is very early if you are a millionaire and can afford a wedding in a day) we are not millionaires so we don't have money to wait until 2 months before the wedding and just pay for it easy with some wedding planner all model like named Felicia barking orders out and telling me my colors will clash so I should settled for a traditional black and red combo for a night wedding….

(well we are a tad bit blessed but still I want to plan my own party and I have to work daily at my 9 to 5... and planning a fine party like wine takes time to become perfect….therefore I plan my wedding in between the other things in life.)....therefore we (I) start the early planning...sounds smart and easy right?

As if...like any other wedding we have encounter two problems...

#1. The guest list
#2. The budget

These are the two ugliest parts of planning but the two that will dictate everything else.

Once you get these out of the way it becomes smooth sailing....

Some people are blessed come from small families...don't really make too many friends...so they already know who their close friends and family are and who gets an invite to the wedding.

They have those cool "less than 100 people" as guest therefore they can find a unique venue for their awesome weddings (so lucky).

We on the other hand have many proposed problems. These problems are a blessing just as much as the people with small families are blessed. Families big or small are always a blessing because having people love you is never a bad thing.

Still our families are not small. It can be wonderful to have so much family (sometimes not so wonderful but you know how that goes)..., still truth be told to become apart of another large family is awesome. Especially a family like the one I am becoming a part of.

I think if we add our two families together you get around 150 - 175 guest...guest who are required to automatically be invited. They are the family members, not by choice but by blood... they are in our lives daily so they deserve to be guest., even if some of those invites are out of courtesy alone.

Then there are friends...

Of course we want our friends at our wedding and since we have big families we can't use the rule of we only had a small intimate wedding among family because it won't be small with our families and some friends are more family than those who are blood…(those friends have gain the title of family)...

So we start with mutual friends (who are family to us) and then friends we both think should be there who are personal friends (still family to us)...and needless to say I stop at 275.

Some people argue that we don't know 275 people...I argued that with my man before writing the list of names that are mines and the 80 percent of his that I know who are his family and a part of his life and are automatically invited only to discover ...wait he was right we do know a lot of people...

A lot of people who mean a lot to us...

And out of these 275 I manage to carefully put on a list...they weren't my brother's friends (who by the way are like family) or his best friends brothers (who by the way have know him forever and would want to come) and even with excluding those type of people we still have a big list...so it is a big problem. As the list isn't made of co-workers and people who I stopped talking to in high school...these are people who are special, even the few past co-workers who will be invited along with a few people from high school and junior high.

Truth be told I stop at 275 when composing the list but I am aware that the parents (mines and his) will both have their own personal groups of people they believe should attend. Like my mother's friends who I consider second moms to me. (I am aware I will have to add them to the list). As we all know that the parents get to invite people they want, like their good friends. You can't tell them no.

Yeah 275 is crazy (but be aware that it will be a Persian and Black wedding so cut us some slack if you have ever been to a Persian event you know it is never a small one), so how do you cut the list?

Well one thing I proposed to my man was...I noticed a lot of friends he has that are nice and I've met... he never refers to them by real names...

So I gave him rules...

#1.anyone who wants to be invited, is required to tell me first and last name as I will not hand out invites to nicknames. Those who I can't introduce to my mothers (the one who birthed me or the one who gave birth to my favorite guy) without a proper name, then they should not come. (that was fine with him... he has been getting real names for me) :)

#2.me and him and his family will argue this...the whole nasty "plus one" debate...

see I believe we have many friends who know each other and many who are single and some who don't know each other yet but nonetheless are single and we also have single family members.

So between single family members and single friends, if we allowed them each to bring a date our list grows by another 50-75 people??? why should we do this when we can form love connections at our wedding? That is like bringing sand to the beach ...if you are single and not dating someone I don't want you digging up an ex-love just to fill a chair with some random person...mingle with someone else single...besides you already have something in common, it’s called you both know the bride and groom.

The only way I will allow a plus one is if you are shy and will not know anyone beside the bride or groom at the wedding...which is big laugh as I don't think we as a couple know of any shy people so that theory of shy is for the birds. We have a few quiet friends (I am a quiet person) but shy isn't the type of group we seem to attract (as I am not a shy person...quiet but not shy).

Children as invites to the wedding, I love the babies but I don't want to worry about them taking over my special day.

Now I know this is a big problem amongst many...but really...I've seen weddings with kids and it gets scary. They turn into daycares and junior high after school socials. I hope my guest are considerate enough to respect that request for no children and hire a babysitter...I mean personally I am aware that some people have young babies who they don't want to leave with just anyone but those who are able to leave their children in the hands of someone they trust I feel they should go ahead and get that babysitter to come and take care of them for a night and enjoy an adult evening. I understand for family, there are and will be family members like my sisters who are from out of state and are also a part of the wedding party, and must bring the babies as all trust worthy babysitters (aka other family members) are all at the wedding and the parents have no way nor would I recommend them leave my small precious nieces and nephews in other states without any family near by to attend to them if a situation arises.

So my rule is no babies...unless you are in the wedding party. Other than that your kids can't come unless your kids are over 21. If anyone wants to protest...I say talk to me about you wanting to pay for an onsite babysitter (key word is "you".... as I won't provide food or babysitters for your babies) and your babysitter can watch your kids and we can put them in a kids room with food that children love to eat like pizza and keep them busy as they will get bored.

So at the end of this...I mean you can try to change my mind if it bothers you but I am still in charge no matter what...tell me why having kids should be allowed... and why plus ones are great if you are feeling froggy and wanna jump.... I mean that is if you think you could change my thoughts.


One thing they say to keep in mind about the guest list is that they say 20% of the guest probably won't be able to attend and if your having a lot of out of state guest or a desination wedding than that amount goes up to 30% so we could be well under our expected count, since 50% of our invites will go to guest out of California.

*But just my luck everyone who I invite and send a "save the date" will probably find a way to come and will find a way to bring two extra people (so I have tended to ignore that said so called 20% to 30% rule that many wedding books and websites have magically pulled out the air"...but it is all love regardless. :)

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ah 'Budg Et'!....
It’s only consider cheap when you are not the one paying for it...gggrrrr


Unto the budget,

Any sane person knows that the guest list and budget run hand and hand (trust me there are some insane brides who don't know the concept and leave their daddies wallet full of grief)...so the budget can easily get big with more and more people as your "per person" count rises your cost rises. On the other hand, the guest list can easily shrink as you realize your budget big isn't strong or large enough to hold your “per person“ count. When you have your eyes set on a 30k budget but you "per person" is not fitting in a 30k budget...those rules for "plus one" and "no children" don't seem so silly.

Most weddings having the dreaded course of always going over the budget or skimping and settling for not having certain features in an attempt to stay under budget.

I refuse to be a victim of the rising budget line or the shrinking decorations and guest list to stay in my budget... But I have my budget where I want mines to be and that is where I expect mines to stop. :)

(I can just hear all of the current almost married brides and past brides reading this and probably laughing at me now and saying "when pigs fly" good luck with the budget plan)

Nonetheless I am out for breaking theories and being one of the few brides who can say she got what she wanted without skimping. Also I want to be able to say I got everything for under or at the stopping point of my budget.

Here is a tip for those planning. There is a book called Wedding for Dummies (I know I know....you are not a dummy...I am not one either) But I must admit that if you want to become budget savvy, you want this book. If you want ideals for wedding planning and for even simple things like the processional line and who stands where…you want this book. Unlike the plenty of websites and other books that tell you to allocate certain percentages to your wedding...like 5% on a dress, 40% on your venue (blah blah) ....Wedding for Dummies helps you to start a budget it won’t tell you exactly what you need to spend on in each part of your wedding in percentages as ..each bride is different and just because I want to spend 20% of my budget on my dress another bride might just want to spend 3% of her budget on a dress...and screw percentages anyways...Wedding for Dummies wants you to plan like a lady.

What does planning like a lady mean.... for example...women love to shoe shop...but not all women love to shoe shop for the same type of shoes and some women don't care for shoes at all...(but most love shoes). Out of all the women who like to shoe shop each has a different amount she is willing to spend on certain shoes...

a lover of sneakers will not pay $200 for a pair of heels. Also you can't tell her why she should if she doesn't care for heels and only plans to wear them to the occasional special event where her mom begs her to show up in something other than her Nikes...but for a great sneaker she might easily want to spend $120 on a new pair of Jordans.

There are women who love heels and will easily spend $150 and only use sneakers for workout and feel that a sweet pair of $40 New Balances does great when it comes to getting the job done for her morning jog.

So if you gave both women $250 dollars and told them both to spend 50% percent of that on a fierce pump and the other half of that on a great sneaker...one girl is bound to go over her sneaker budget and the other is bound to go over her budget on what she will spend for a heel and they both will more than likely short change the other they care less about...so why tell them both to use the same percentage for what they should spend on their shoe rather than what they really want to spend it on?

Instead give each woman the option of deciding on what she is willing to spend on each thing and in the end she should have a estimate budget on how much her wedding will cost. She should have a low amount and a high amount and it will give her a chance to decide if she should raise or lower some amounts to achieve the budget she desires. It also gives her a chance to gauge if she needs to redo her price on what she might have thought a wedding would cost

For example....

say I want flowers but I am only willing to spend between $500 and $1000 for them and these flowers are to be for my bouquets, centerpieces and any other additional decorations in the wedding. Now I am under the impression that flowers should cost me $700 so I made my high bid at $1000 on the safe side. What if it turn out that the lowest I can find flowers are at $1000 and I don't get that many... I can get creative and use the ceremony flowers as centerpieces after the ceremony ...but at least now that I have an ideal of how much they will cost I can plan ahead for that option, so now I can see if maybe something else in my budget I can lower to raise my flower budget and keep my wedding total the same. So I can now review something else on my budget that might be around my low bid...like if I thought cupcakes for the reception would be great in place of a cake. So I thought that my cupcakes would cost me between $400 and $800...and I was under the impression that they usually cost $600 but turns out I found a great new up and coming bakery that wants to give me a deal on cupcakes for being their first bride for the amount of $200...I am well under my budget on cupcakes allowing me to use that amount on flowers but still keeping me in my overall amount.

So I am blessed to say that Wedding for Dummies has saved me a lot of my stress of looking at money and budgets in the way that is wasn't going to fit for me or any savvy bride. Before when I would type in my budget and guest list amount on sites like The Knot...they would compute percentages leaving me to think if my wedding is 100k, then I need 10k on flowers when I might just need 1k or 2k and I can spend that other 8k from the ten somewhere else.......

it wasn't until I made my own list minus the percentage craziness that wedding planning sites seem think is a budget bible…..then it made sense in what I was willing to pay at the most (my high bid) for something and what I was hoping to pay (my low bid) if I could get a deal and what I felt most amounts would cost (estimated amount)...

Once I got that solved…..I begin to feel at ease...because honestly every wedding and every location doesn't cost the same. Nor does every wedding look the same or cost the same as every bride, groom and what they want out of the experience isn't going to be like another bride and groom's plan.


I am happy to say...I made my budget and my list and they are both together and well so now I have officially started to enjoy my planning...

up next...

("Venue searching - Do you really think Me and my dress will make it in a portable toilet, not today and I refuse that fate on my guest...your location has not advance to the final round"
and
"Bridesmaids - you can't live with them...you can't live without them")