Your A-B-C Covid Guest List: Things to consider
COVID guest list
The coronavirus has had a massive impact on all of us over the last year and sure enough, if you are hosting your wedding in the next six months chances are good that you’ll have to rethink your guest list to turn it into a COVID friendly guest list. Currently, there are no gatherings allows and if we have to predict; restrictions on the number of people that will be allowed at a gathering is a serious consideration to keep in mind. We spoke to some of South Africa’s best wedding planners to get their advice on how to reduce and adjust your guest list accordingly.
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Start from the back
Aleit from Aleit Weddings foresees “it to be much more intimate, much smaller, much fewer guests travelling to attend a wedding. He suggests working backwards with your wedding guest list by starting start with your service providers; so think your:
- Minister and/or officer
- Photographer
- Videographer
- Catering – Will they be on-site or bringing the food to the venue?
- Sound and DJ
- Live Entertainment – It would just be silly for example to book a five piece band because they will take up 5 spots where you could have invited 5 additional family members or friends
Keep the service professional to a minimum!
The A-B-COVID List
You obviously want your family at your wedding day, you want your siblings there and your closest friends there so be sure to create an A, B and C list. If names are popping up on all three lists it’s best to invite them as they are very important to you so that’s probably something that you should start doing early on. Don’t be afraid to ask your potential guests if they would feel comfortable attending a wedding where they might stand a chance of being exposed to the virus and have your guests actually have a choice in whether they want to or can attend the wedding or not.
Invite people that you love! People that are close to you and that’s close to your heart. Aleit mentions in terms of his own life, “who will be my friend in 15 years from now: but if guests don’t know the name of your pet be it a dog, rabbit or a cat; whatever pet it is you don’t need to invite them to your wedding if they don’t know your baby’s name because they’re not close to you it’s quite obvious!”
Always put health first
There are people that just aren’t healthy. They might have had chemo, they might have diabetes you don’t know. Please don’t invite them no matter how difficult. It’s not fair towards them, or towards you and your other guests. It’s best to automatically not include them on the guest list seeing as their immune systems are not strong enough. This will include guests who are a bit older who are potentially a bit compromised from a health point of view. Like you can ask guests personal preferences with food, you can ask them if they have any underlying ailments that they are aware of as well. It’s important to know this not only for yourselves but for all your guests that will be present on the day. 
Different guest list for different parts of the day
Generally, we get human beings who are a little bit more cautious whom you may want to give a different offer around your wedding day, for example, you want to invite them but you could straight away say for you we’ve thought of a different solution to attend the wedding. Some of the guests, for example, can attend the ceremony with social distancing in place, while the rest tune in via live streaming and have a picnic styled snack afterwards and then have a second get-together inside the venue with the other half of your guests.
Tracy from Trunk Event states,”We’ve had couples discuss live streaming the wedding which we’ve had an amazing response on were the photographers and videography teams plug-in and sound technicians set up all technicalities at the ceremony and reception so that your guests can literally be part of your wedding day. This is a wedding trend that’s here to stay!”
The most important question to you as a couple is: Who are the people that mean the most to you? Maybe exclude work colleagues and distant friends and stick to core family and those who live in clusters. You can safely seat a family at a table with mother, father and kids and not need to worry too much about the physical distancing because they live together at home and they’ll travel together.
