Guest Count

This post is for all of you who are where I was a year ago. I thought I desperately wanted a smaller wedding, with maybe a hundred people in attendance. Ha ha. Such a wedding was not in the cards, and my fiance and I watched as our guest list went from 200 to 250 to 300 to 370 guests (picture me with eyes popping out of my head). My parents and I guessed that we might have to accommodate 250 - 275 people at the most, which narrowed down the venues quite a bit (while my fiance protested that not even 200 people would come). Another factor is that the church is Prince of Peace, which is located out in the suburbs of northwest Houston.

When we went looking at reception sites, There were three in the original group that would have held everyone without breaking fire codes, but one would involve a large tent and portable air conditioners (bye-bye budget) being erected. The other we shied away from because we didn't want my fiance's relatives to think we were complete Texas fanatics and there happens to be lots of Texas "paraphernalia" on the walls. The third was the Chateau Polonez, which not only fit size of the wedding we might have, but is also gorgeous.

Months went by and we sent the save-the-date cards to everyone, and then months went by again, as we sent invitations out to all 370 guests (which was really 350 guests, then 20 more as the "declines" came in. And here we are, with 19 days to go, and a guest count that is currently going to be around 150, as many of our friends and family apparently have better things to do with their lives than witness our nuptials (I know it sounds bitter - shocking - but it's not, they really do, like go on mission trips to Africa and move to Madrid - and yes, they're not bad excuses, they're real, I checked).

The moral of the story is that my fiance is right. No, no, that can't be it. The moral of the story is that everything works out for the best. Even though I considered eloping, the guest count is actually close to what I had envisioned, and if we hadn't thought that we were going to have 275 guests, we probably wouldn't have even thought about the Chateau Polonez as a venue, and it really is fantastic.