Weddings... - guestlist hints and tricks!
I admit it… Getting married is definitely a trend of the XXI century… 4 weddings approaching in the summer… From my vast experience drawn from attending at least 20 weddings amongst family and friends, here’s my 2 cents on how to structure your wedding list!
- Guests type A (Attitude / "Ambiente") – these are your Friends, most likely still in student life, who cannot (at this stage) cover the cost of their presence and their meal… However, they will provide the mood your wedding needs and spread the fun through the crowd. A small group of committed “A” guests is fundamental to have a FUN wedding!
- Guests type B (Break-even) – these are your friends, and some family members (mostly cousins), young people that started working a short time ago and can at least cover the cost of their meal. This is always a good bet as it will provide the sheep for the shepherds mentioned previously… watch-out as exageratting on this group in parallel with a well staffed open bar, might lead to a near-chaos situation!
- Guests type C (Cash cows!) – these are the great-great-great- aunts and uncles, customers, patients, partners, distant relatives, generally people with whom you have a distant connection, but still strong enough to bring’em in... obviously the ones that you know will cover for their meal costs and maybe for the whole A-team!
Balancing these 3 groups is crucial not only for the happiest day of your life, but also for the start-up of Your-house Inc. Remember… Is it worth it to bet on a fantastic day and then receiving people at your place with plastic cups and drinks and an improvised i-Pod as stereo? Or should you bet on a more chilled out wedding, maximising the party potential of your place in the next months/years???
This is the REAL question behind ANY wedding ;)
As your wedding guest, I will adapt to an A or B (unfortunately not C...) role according to your convenience!
Carpe Diem!
2 Comments:
Dear Mr. Cruz,
I find your ABC approach to wedding guests refreshing.
However, by giving a very focused approach in terms of “what” is your wedding guest in your list (an A, a B or a C), you fail to give an answer as to the “why” is the guest in the list in the first place.
I do not wish to sound like the old scholar that will always correct you, no matter how good your answer was, but I’ll nevertheless try to contribute to your findings.
IMO, you fail to give proper visibility to two groups that will always feature in any wedding guest list. I’ll deal with them henceforth:
1. There are always people that you have to invite, no matter if you like them or not, family or friends: the ones that invited you to their own wedding. It’s something you just have to do, and you might as well start your list with these people, as everyone else will probably creep into the list in a rather more natural (or financially studied) manner. I’ll call this group “R”, for reciprocity.
2. There is another group that is absolutely mandatory in your list, which is mainly populated by your close relatives. This may sound obvious, but is only a proof that this is a sound argument. It’s like an obligation to invite this group, and for this, I’ll call them “O”.
Now, I’d like to draw your attention that your group “C” and this group “O” are mainly the same. The only sample escaping from the intersection of both groups is formed by people that you want to invite because of the potential gift (included in your group “C”), but are not close relatives (my group “O”). However, you have to agree that inviting any big-gift-potential guests are very much your obligation, so I’ll include your group “C” in group “O”.
And that’s it! Now you have a very useful R.A.B.O framework to work with!
If you look back, you’ll probably find that you’ve been classified as R.A.B.O. in the 20+ weddings you’ve attended!
Here’s to hoping you’ll one day make your way up in the R.A.B.O. ladder!
Kind regards,
Dear Byrdie Nam Nam,
Although I absolutely appreciate your brilliant reasoning, I fail to understand why you consider my theoretical approach a failure, as my simple goal was to do a cash flow analysis of a wedding party...
Still, I will dig a bit further on your conclusions and try to add my 2 cents, to make it more sellable...
And why...? Well, there is a strong "linguistic" reason why RaboBank cannot start a branch in Portugal, so I am forced to try to tweak a bit with your framework, while humbly trying to gather the best of our 2 worlds...
1.I don't agree with the fact that HAVE to invite people that invite you... (Ex: you are invited as an "O" to a colleague's wedding. Time flows, you change job and you gradually loose touch...then you actually move abroad... If you get married there, is there still any sense of obligation? What if the person wasn't that important to you and now you reeeeally need the seats?). Therefore I would propose to divide this segment in two groups:
1.1) "U" for UGH, which are those persons we can only answer with a long Uuuggghhhh when we ask ourselves "why" they are invited...;
1.2) "R" for Reciprocity, following your suggestion;
This allows an even better interpretation of the cause!
2. Given the family importance in latin societies, I feel the word obligation as a bit harsh to define family... so to make it more politically correct I would suggest to rename this group as "S" for Sibling, a much more neutral term, but still straight to the point!
3. As for the rest of the guest list, my A's, B's and your O's and given that you have shown no interest in my cash flow approach, I can bundle the A's and B's in one group. Still, as I find it hard to identify a group name that includes both, I would say that "O" for Others is a good choice, as it will include all other cool motivations that can be further explored!
Therefore, this leaves us with a much more "why" oriented and politically correct ¡URSO!framework!
Hope you had, have and keep having a tendency towards the latter (un)described groups ;)
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