GUESS? List

It is a pain coming up with a Guest list. It WAS a pain coming up with the Guest list. Why? Because you realize you have so many friends you can't invite not because you don't want to but because you can't afford to. "But we were tight!" Right. All that doesn't matter anymore. You want to invite people whom you both know, people who are game, people who are closer to us. Of course, relatives do not necessarily fit into any of those categories. I have cousins whom I have not seen and only heard about. Do we invite them?

This is where our parents come in. We ask them the dreaded question, "Who would YOU want to invite?" My mom, in particular, wanted to invite neighbors, long lost relatives and other people whom I haven't seen nor met but only heard about. My mom is this social butterfly of her time and she really has a lot of friends and I mean, a LOT. What's more, she's a teacher so that's 500 new faces for every year in her life. Mama took more time in coming up with her list because she wasn't sure yet. Anyway, we had our first guest list and we had 170. HOLY CRAP. We did NOT have that number in mind. So I nod (although only on the phone), tell my Mom we'll look into it again as we get near the wedding date and hope for the best outcome.

We are determined to have 150 guests with a possible maximum of 170. I really have no idea how many people will choose to be there but we are expecting crashes (very Filipino), no-shows (still very Filipino) and delayed notifications (the ULTIMATE Filipino trait). We'll never know until what, the day before the wedding? At least, budgetwise, we are prepared for it. Now that we've already paid a 50% downpayment, this shouldn't be much of a headache.