 and you're watching Beyond Grenades today. And today is another very important video in my wedding series, which is, who should you not invite to your wedding? Look, I'm gonna keep it real, real with everybody. I'm probably gonna hurt some feelings along the way, but these are things that you're going to need to understand if you are a bride and kind of more importantly, if you are a guest. Now, as soon as you get engaged, you're gonna start thinking about that guest list. You should just start working on it, you know, as soon as you can. You're gonna think that you're gonna only have your closest friends and your closest family members. No, you quickly are gonna know that you have some random cousins, some random aunts and uncles that you might not have seen since you were a child, but they have to come. You're wondering if you should invite your coworkers, do you invite your boss, do you invite your ex, do you invite kids, do you allow everyone to have a plus one? These are all the things that we're going to cover. You will quickly notice that the most expensive thing about your wedding is going to be your guest count. The quickest way to bring down your budget is to lower your guest count. Now, on average, I did a little research, it says that the average cost for a wedding is about $69 per person. That's on average. Honestly, mine was double that. Now, I would say from my experience, it's looking more like at least $100 per person. So if you're a guest and you're like, oh, can I have a plus one? And first of all, you don't even have a girlfriend, you just met this girl at the bar, you probably spent about $12 on this girl. And now you wanna bring her to my wedding and you want me to pay basically $100 for this girl you just met. So you're basically asking me to give her $100. Don't even know her, you haven't even given her $100, but you want me to pay for her at my wedding. Okay, okay. So when you ask someone, we're gonna get into asking, I have so much to cover. Okay, if you ask someone, if you could bring someone to their wedding, you're asking if I will pay for their food, if I will pay for their drinks, if I will pay for the seat they are sitting in, their napkin, their fork, their knife, their plate, their glass, their champagne glass, their party favor, their invitation. There's a lot. It's not just bringing a guest to like a birthday party where if they don't get birthday cake, too bad. Weddings are very, very expensive and it's not always a personal thing about that person. Sometimes it's just not in the budget. Now, if we could charge an entrance fee at the door, you could bring whoever you want. But that's not how it is. Okay, so now that you know about how much did it cost per person, as a bride, remember that. As a groom, remember that. As the parents of the bride and groom, remember that. And as a guest, please, please remember that. So let's start off with family. They're family. How can you say no to family? Depending on your budget, you might have to say no to family. Depending on who is paying for the wedding might have a little sway to how things go. If the parents are paying for it, they can invite whatever found members they want because they're paying for it. It's their money and you're kind of just up to them. If they want to pay for it, okay. If it's like an uncle or aunt that you can't stand and they will ruin your wedding day if they are there because there will be glaring at you from the back of the room, gonna have to do some negotiating to see who should really come. And don't just think that you could invite family members from out of town, thinking that they won't come because of travel expenses. Well, also depending on where you live, if you live in like New York, California, Florida, they might be like, ooh, this is a perfect time for a vacation. Let's go and bring the whole family. Now, now everybody's coming and you didn't think that they were. Also make sure to put on your invitation exactly who is coming. On my invitation, I put two so-and-so reserving blank seats of two. That means I have two spaces for you. So you can't just put five of two because the whole family's not invited. Two of two are allowed to come. Very important on your invitations. Don't forget some type of number system or address exactly two so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so. You three are invited. The next one on the no-no list is exes. You might think, well, that's obvious. Why would I invite my ex to my wedding? Well, depending on the circumstance, you might be still cool with your ex. You might still have a normal friendship with them. But make sure your spouse knows and trusts your relationship. You can't say, oh yeah, he's like a brother now. He's not gonna wanna hear that. He doesn't wanna look at your ex sitting there in the audience on your wedding day. Communicate with your spouse. See if they actually know if it's normal or not. Honestly, I don't think they should be there, but depends on your relationship. The next big one is kids. Really think about if you want to have kids at your wedding. I've been to weddings where the kids are running around. They're already in the dessert table. That's not even open yet. They're taking up all the time in the photo booth. They're just screaming during the ceremony. Do you want the baby crying during your vows? All things to think about. You're thinking, oh, they're my little cousins. They're family, blah. Well, they might just need to get a babysitter. And honestly, those parents might need a day off. So they're gonna use your wedding as a day to get a babysitter and have a fun night out. Now if you wanna know a polite way to say it, you can go on Pinterest and type in wedding invitation etiquette or no kids wedding invitation. They give you a bunch of different prompts. So if you go on to Pinterest, they will give you some special wording to make it sound a little bit nicer. Then don't bring your screaming baby to my wedding. Now let's talk about the plus ones. I think, in my opinion, that you only should have a plus one if you are married or have been in a relationship for some time now. Now, you might be engaged and that person is single. And if you have a year engagement, if they have a boyfriend by six months, eight, a couple months, okay, fine. If the invitations haven't gone out yet and I know you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, I'm gonna let them come. But if I know you're single, why am I gonna give you a plus one? It's a good chance you're gonna know someone there. And I find a nice person. I'm gonna put you on a table where you know other people, other coworkers, other friends, other family. I'm not just gonna put you at your own loan or table. It's an event, you're gonna meet people. I don't think I need to give you a plus one to just go find somebody on Facebook to bring your little sister, to bring a coworker. Like why? I'm paying per person. I'm purposely not inviting some family members and some of my coworkers because it's too expensive. And you're asking me if you could just bring a random person? In fact, I have a friend who sent out her wedding invitations and maybe a couple weeks before the wedding, her coworker comes up to her and says, oh, I have a problem. I have a boyfriend now. Yes, you do have a problem because I only reserved one seat for you. If you have had a boyfriend for now 24 hours and you wanna bring to the wedding, sorry, already paid the caterer, I have a final guest count. I think you'll survive one night without him. Now, this might sound a little cut throat, but it's gonna get that way. Your budget is going to quickly increase. If your catering cost alone is $100 per plate, if people bring five extra people, that's $500. $500 for five random people that you don't even know. That's for $500 for your strangers. I just don't. Now, unfortunately, one of the most awkward things that the bride and groom are going to have to deal with is not the guest's guests, but it could be the guest itself. You will run into people that swear that you guys have been best friends and you don't even know my spouse's name. Here's a little rule of thumb for everybody. If you have to say, hey, I better be invited to your wedding, you're probably not gonna be invited. There's no way that my closest friends would ask me, am I gonna be invited? Cause it's obvious, it's obvious they're invited cause we hang out every day, we talk every day. But if you go to, hey, hope I get invited or I better be invited or else, so you're threatening me? You're threatening me for a wedding invite. Yep, can't wait to have you there. I'm telling you guys, this might sound crazy, but as soon as you get engaged, you will learn all of this. If you are a bride or groom or been engaged or married, leave me a comment and let me know if you can relate. Let me know how you dealt with it. Let me know what your biggest problem was. You tell me. Thanks, babe. Another awkward one would be your coworkers. Co-workers are people that you see every day, yes, but you have to see them every day. Does that make you best friends because you see each other every day? No, but you might establish a relationship because you do see each other every day. So if you wanna go the office route, I would make sure it's someone that you actually talk to outside of the office. Do you guys have phone conversations about non-work-related topics? Do you guys go out for drinks? Do you hang out outside of work? If so, I will consider them your friend. But if your only interaction is between nine to five and you only talk about work stuff, just let them stay as a coworker. And this can go for your boss as well. If you're talking about your wedding at work and now all your coworkers are all excited and your boss is in there like, oh. You know, you don't wanna piss off your boss either. It's gonna kind of depend on you, but if you do talk to your boss, you have a relationship with your boss, you guys are cool, you don't mind your boss seeing you maybe get a little loose at your wedding, drinking, whatever it may be, then it's fine if it's in your budget. But I don't think it's mandatory to invite your boss and or coworkers just because you see them all the time. The same thing will go for your classmates. If you're in school, you might have a class with us like, hey, I see you every day and I'll get invited to your wedding. Well, we're in the same class. We're both trying to graduate. I have to see you every day, but we never talk. We've never hung out. So am I getting invited? The overall best thing you could do to avoid family feuds and friends feuds is to make a list. Make a list of the most important people and then trickle down to your maybes. Get your budget and if you have some extra wiggle room in your budget, let's invite the top people on that maybe list. But if you don't, just know you're gonna have your main core people there and if these people down here don't wanna be your friend anymore because you'd invite them, then how much of a friend were they in the first place? There are so many things that a bride and groom can stress about for their wedding day. There's a billion details, but we don't need the extra stress of guests. So if you are watching, please never ask somebody if you can go to their wedding. Do not ask them if you could bring a guest to their wedding. If the bride and groom don't know that you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, then you guys aren't even really that close because they don't even know about your relationships. So should you even be invited? Overall, the biggest lesson here is to never assume. You should not assume that you're getting an invite. You should not assume that you get a plus one. You should not assume you could bring your kids. You should not assume that your crazy uncle Lou was invited. These are all things that should be decided by the bride and groom. This is their special day. It is a very expensive day, and we might not have the budget for all these people. And if I'm a billionaire and I still don't invite you, I just don't like it. Here are some of the most important questions you need to ask yourself. One, have you spoken to them in the last five years? Have you spoken to them in the last year? Have you spoken to them in the last six months? Have you ever hung out outside of work and or school? Would you be upset if they didn't invite you to their wedding? Can you imagine your big day without them? Depending on how you answer those questions, I think you just figured out how bad you really want them to be there. Now I know this with a lot of information and I know some of you didn't like what you heard today, but I just gotta keep it real. Every bride that I've ever spoken with has gone through the struggle of the invites. Your family wants them there, you don't. You have friends that think they're your best friends. You don't even know their last name. You're gonna get it all. But I hope this video will help you narrow down the people that you really, really, really want to be there on your big days. If you can relate to this video, I want you to leave me a comment and let me know your experience on what your biggest struggle was when it came to inviting. And if you agree with me on all of these hard things to figure out when inviting your guests. You can also leave me a comment if you have another wedding series topic that you think I should discuss. I got a whole bunch. Not only did I just get married myself, I'm also a wedding planner for those of you guys that don't know, so I know all the ins and outs. Before you go, please give this video a thumbs up and subscribe. I post new videos every Sunday, so I'll see you guys next week. Thanks for watching Bianca Renee today. And if you're watching this video when I did invite you to my wedding, don't hate me.