After seven years of marriage you still make me laugh louder then I thought possible, you encourage me to dream big + inspire me to hope without fear and best of all you still wake me up each morning with a soft kiss at day break. You and me are forever!

7 years ago when planning our wedding we had a guest list of over 350 guest, to be honest it was a scary number and venues thought we were crazy when we told then our guest count. We needed to “Lighten the List” a bit to say the least. So we did something no one else had ever mentioned before – we asked our single friends to come STAG. Yes we did. And guess what, it was the best thing we ever did! Today we shared how we made it happen and how much our friends LOVED it!

By asking our friends to come STAG we dropped our guest list from 350 down to 250 (and yes all 250 people showed up). I wanted to clarify here, if we had a friend who was engaged they were not included in the email, fiancé’s were welcome. But if there were only dating we asked them to come STAG. We advise to never send out invitations with hopes of no shows – trust us, if you are well loved almost everyone will show, even those who live across the US or even out of the country.

The How
The trick is this – Set up a group message on Facebook addressing all your friends who are invited to your wedding. If they are not on FB you will have to message the non-FB users separately.  In one group message that will send out to all of them at the same time request them to come STAG. Sounds scary I know, but if you do it with love because you want them all there it will be well received. Be sure to address why you are asking them to come stag, reassure them they will not be alone, and LOVE LOVE LOVE them!

Here is a sample message:

“Dear AMAZING Friends!!

And trust us, amazing is an understatement, you all mean the world to us. Over the years each and everyone of you have played a huge part in our lives and without you we would not be who we are today. Heck, we may not have ever met if it was not for you. So with that in mind we could not imagine our wedding day without you there. 

However… we need a BIG BIG Favor. And yes we are about to ask you all a very BIG FRIEND FAVOR – truly and honestly only because we LOVE you all so much. And we have decided to send this message to all of you at the same time so you know for sure you won’t be alone. 

As we have been planning out our wedding we have realized that our guest list is enormous so much so that our venue coordinator looked at us as if we have four heads. Long story short we need to “lighten the guest list” and we have come up with a creative way to do this. Here is where the BIG FRIEND FAVOR comes in. From our hearts to yours we cant do this without you there! We are asking that you all come STAG (without a date, insert nails on chalk board). I know that is hard to hear. But we are only asking because we could not bare cutting any of your names from our guest list, your to important to us.

There is marvelous news! All of you will be STAG together (kinda like prom)… too soon for that joke?!?! HAHA thats were we will draw the line;) But for real, we want all of you there and we are hoping that if everyone comes STAG y’all will have a BLAST hanging out with each other and with us. And on other good news you don’t have to worry about a date liking your friends or having to go through the sometimes daunting task of finding a date (we have all ben there). 

Goodness we hope this comes across with great love, a little silliness and the knowledge that we ADORE you and want you there. 

Love,
The soon-to-Be’s” 

This worked better then we ever expected it too. The day of our wedding all our friends showed up STAG as requested. They all hung out together, ate together and danced the entire night! Our dance floor was never ever empty. And for months after our wedding our friends were still talking about how awesome it was to come STAG and have the opportunity to just let loose and hangout with everyone like old times.  It need up being one amazing party with all the friends and family we love so much.

If your guest list is enormous, like ours was, and having to cut any friends from your list puts your stomach in knots we suggest this little tip. And even with an endless budget, when your looking at $150 – $200 per plate for 350 guest the budget begins to climb quickly.  We hope this helps and makes your wedding AMAZING with a night no one will forget!