You are worth two stamps

One to send the invitation to you, one so you can mail me back saying you are not coming to the wedding.

as I get further and further into the wedding process, the costs are staring to add up. Not that I am obsessing about them, as we like to say 'we have the money, and are only doing this once". At the same time we don't have an unlimited budget.

One of the key ways to get your budget expenditures down is to lower your head count. who you invite to your wedding is a very personal thing, and according to all the magazines, websites, in laws, outlaws, friends, and enemies...this list will change over time. However the list I got from my mom is not going down anytime soon.

There seems to be two ways to tackle this problem. First is to fight over each and every person that is on the guest list. Telling your parents "I don't care if they invited you to their daughters wedding, I don't know these people, they ain't coming" or setting ground rules like "unless you have talked to them in the last year (talked! not wrote on their facebook wall) they are not invited"...well that will bring a lot of tears.

The second way, which is what I am doing much to my fiances chagrin, is to invite everyone you want and hope that they say no. It is a strange thing to think "i like this person so much I want them to know I am getting married, to who, when, and where.....but I don't actually want them to come.....if they could stay at home but send a gift, well that would be ideal."

In my defense most of my invitees have to travel, have kids, and really only liked me when I was drunk....so out of the 80 I am inviting I am thinking that 8-16 wont show (they say it is 10%-20%).....my fiance thinks, if we invite them they will show up.....or in her words, we are going to need a bigger tent (and budget).

So please, if you read this (and no one does) and you get an invitation to my wedding...to show your love and support, please don't come. It would be an awesome gift.

magazines

The lifeblood of the wedding industry are magazines. Do a quick search for them and you will get more results then people invited to your wedding. brides.com, bridgesmag.com, premirebrides.com, bridalguide.com....even regional! In my results I got NEbrides.com (for the New England bride I guess)....these are just a sample of what is online.
You would think that in today's word that online would be the way to go. All the information at your finger tips, easy to link to and share...but you would be wrong.
go to your local newsstand and you will find many, many, many bridal magazines. Brides like the magazine format and trust me if you are newly engaged your tv time will now be interrupted with questions regarding what you like and a flash of a page in front of you.

something I learned: Do not pause the tv show you are watching and sigh before you look over at the magazine your fiance is sharing with you.

I think the bridal industry is keeping the magazine insdustry afloat. These magazines run about $10-$20 each. Since the seasons, years, fashions, and trends keep changing their is no shortage of ideas in these magazines. Brides like to page through them like air, finding ideas for how to present the cake or escort cards, circling them with pen, ripping them out and storing them for later if warranted. Like a detective hunting down clues to find the best weddings ideas ever, your fiance will pour through these magazines night after night.

How prevalent are magazines in the wedding industry? My fiance recently brought home theknot.com magazine. What started off online, is now a magazine (also a book, theknot.com's big book of lists).

Do yourself a favor, if you know anyone who recently got married, ask them if they still have their wedding magazines and bring them home to your fiance. You will get points for being involved in the wedding, and if you bring home more then 10 you probably saved enough money to have one more guest.