Your parents will probably want to invite every relative, family friend, co-worker and business associate they have to your wedding. If you're worried that your parents, or his, may over invite their friends and relatives to your wedding, give them this list of guest list etiquette do's and don'ts from The Essential Guide to Wedding Etiquette book.
- Invite only those friends and family that the bride and groom know
- Don't shift your IOU's onto your son or daughter. Just because your friends invited you to their daughter's wedding does not automatically mean that you have to invite them to your children's wedding
- Remember that it's the bride and groom's wedding, and keep it foremost in your mind that you've had your wedding day with your favorite people. Now it's their turn
- Be a dream partner. Volunteer to cut several of your distant friends so that the bride and groom can add some of their closest friends
- Deliver your list to the bride and groom on time, if not early
- Help the bride and groom to create a complete guest list, reminding them of first cousins and whom they may have forgotten, thus saving them from etiquette snafus in their invitation process
- When you compile lists, cross the duplicate names off of your printed list, not theirs
- Voluntarily star or underline names that can be added to the backup list. If the bride and groom receive regrets from expected guests, they can look to their backup list to send out invitations to others they'd like to have at the wedding (but could not include on the master list)
Click here to learn how to build your wedding guest list
Top 5 etiquette mistakes parents don't want to make
Excerpted from The Essential Guide to Wedding Etiquette by Sharon Naylor. © 2005 Source Books.