The Guest List: Thoughts on Friendship

I guess I have been thinking a lot lately about feeling included, and it seems ironic that my main goal for this week is getting our invitations out in the mail. While I decided to take the easy way out and design and purchase our invitations online, it still means we have to finalize our guest list. I have heard before that doing your guest list can be the most stressful part of the wedding planning- obviously, because you must decide whom to include on one of the biggest days of your life. And with a large family and a small budget, sure enough- these tasks have been equally challenging and thought provoking.

We all know "that group" of childhood friends that grew up together, went to college together and are all still the best of friends. While both Nathan and I have great friends from every stage of life, we do not have this. We both grew up in small towns, moved away to college and met new best friends. Then we moved to another state, and made connections with new people from all over the country. When we moved to another country, we made special bonds with people that shared our experience. We have worked with many interesting people that have touched our lives and taught us about ourselves.

One of the first tasks in planning your wedding is deciding whom to include in your wedding party, which seems to force you to define the relationships you have with your close friends. Our environments and influences have consistently changed, but these friends have helped us to feel included in their lives, even if we were far away. They were instrumental in our lives in the past, and will be important in our future together. With that being said, there are many people that are very special to us that are not in our wedding party- I hope they know how much we love them. 

What I mean to say in this blog post, is that our lives have been touched by many wonderful people- and there is no way we can possibly include all of them on our wedding day. When finalizing our list and addressing our wedding invitations this week, I am grateful that we could add many more names if our budget allowed. I am so proud of our friendships. I feel so grateful that our lives have been filled with love and laughter.