Guestlistication

Any article will tell you that other than the venue, the guest list determines a lot of what you do for your wedding. Mostly how much food to order, because that's why anyone ever shows up at these things. It's not as if we have a long tradition of lonely strangers hitting it off at weddings in Malaysia anyway.

... Or do we?

In my opinion, you should have the guest list ready first before picking the venue, though Enfant Terrible and I did that backwards. Still, it's a small venue and we have a short guest list, so that works out for us.

If I had to advise anyone planning their wedding in this regard, I'd tell them to hunt down the principals as early as possible to finalize guest numbers and names. "Principals" refers to the parents of the couple, because they're your source of old people names and contact details.

It's easy for this task to become a "my side/your side" thing, as parents are individuals who will answer the same question ("May I have [Relative's] contact please?") differently.

My mum said she'd list her siblings' names, phone numbers, and addresses. Two weeks later, I asked if the list was ready and she wrote it down there and then. And the phone numbers or addresses were missing for half of it.

Enfant Terrible's mum wouldn't hand over her phone, saying she'd tell us who we should invite, and then listed a bunch of names when we had no recording instruments on hand, not even pen and paper. Eventually, I cornered her one morning, and she produced an address book (that she's had the whole time!!!) she'd compiled when Enfant Terrible's sister got married a few years ago.

As I'm superstitious, I only feel comfortable recounting this because we've pinned down our relatives already. Coming up next will be the rigmarole of deciding which of Enfant Terrible's father's friends we will invite.*

/prickly thoughts

*We're inviting them in honor of his father, who passed away last year, so "why his friends only and not other friends?" is not up for discussion.