Putting together a guest list is one of the trickiest parts of any wedding planning. There never seems to be enough room for all the people that you’d like to include, and it always seems that when you invite one person, you need to invite someone else. In this article, I will discuss the first steps in putting together your guest list: choosing the reception size and counting up first tier of guests.

The first decision is to decide on the size of your reception. In general, you should invite anyone whom you invite to your wedding to your reception, though not necessarily vice versa. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with having a very small wedding and a large reception. Once you have made this decision, you can move onto the next step.

Second, you should include the mandatory guests. This includes yourselves, your wedding party, the celebrant, and the parents of child attendants. You also must include the spouses, fiances or live-in partners of any of the above. (Note that this is a general rule of invitations. If you invite someone, you must invite the spouse, fiance or live-in partner of that person).

Next, you’ll probably want to invite your close family, including your siblings, parents, children and grandparents. Strictly speaking, it isn’t mandatory to invite people from these groups, but it is the usual custom. However, if you are very estranged from someone, you are not obligated to invite that person. Again remember to invite spouses, fiances and live-in partners.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to see how much room you have left. You might be surprised just how many plates are taken up by just mandatory guests and close family. At this point, you’ll have a number of seats you can use for your other guests.