Who Should You Invite To Your Wedding?

If you're in the process of planning your wedding, you already know that just asking this question is about to put you and your fiancee into the middle of a treacherous minefield! Perhaps money is no object, but what if it is? Sure, you and your future spouse plan to invite all of the members of your families and all of your friends, but what if you can only invite so many? Who makes the cut and who doesn't?

And then, what if you can't agree who should be invited? Will any disagreement you might have with your soon-to-be spouse become an ongoing point of tension within your marriage? Should you invite somebody you don't know because your parents would like them to be there? And should any nice gift you might receive from a prospective guest that neither you nor your future spouse know very well sway your decision?

We're not afraid to tackle questions like these here at Political Calculations. We're here to help guide you through the minefield you're about to enter, and what better way to do that for this situation than to create a tool that you can use to rank your guests.

Why? Because that's exactly what you'll have to do solve this very tricky problem with a minimum amount of hurt feelings all around. We're here to help you do just that in the fairest, most objective way possible.

Here's how it works. We'll ask you a number of questions about you and your fiancee's potential guests, for which you'll answer "Yes" or "No". We'll assign a point value to each answer and then total up all the points for each question.

Are you ready? We have a lot of questions to consider, so let's get started....

Potential Guest Data
Input Data	Values
Are they a member of you or your fiancee's immediate family?	Yes No
Are they a member of you or your fiancee's extended family?	Yes No
How many years have either you or your fiancee known them?
How many years has it been since either you or your fiancee heard from them?
Is it someone that you or your fiancee have never met?	Yes No
Do either you or your fiancee like them?	Yes No
Does your fiancee dislike them?	Yes No
Do you expect that they'll give you a nice gift?	Yes No
Do they expect to be invited?	Yes No
Are they part of a group of people who could be (but do not expect to be) invited?	Yes No
Have they been endorsed by someone subsidizing your wedding?	Yes No
Are they a former significant other for you or your fiancee?	Yes No
Are they mutual friends of both you and your fiancee?	Yes No
Are they members of the opposite sex who are not friends of both you and your fiancee?	Yes No
Did they congratulate you promptly when you announced your engagement?	Yes No
Did they congratulate you on Facebook (or MySpace, etc.) and that was the first you've heard from them in years?	Yes No
Were you invited to their wedding?	Yes No
Did you go to their wedding?	Yes No
Do you suspect that they might try to make out with your mother (or other important guest) in a drunken stupor during the reception?	Yes No

Potential Guest Score
Calculated Results	Values
Potential Guest Ranking Score

From here, you just need to record each guest's score and when you've gone through all the potential names you're considering having inviting to your wedding and reception, sort them in order from highest to lowest value. After that, it's just a matter of counting down through all the names until you reach the desired number of guests that you'd like, or can afford, to have.

If you would like to see how each question is weighted in our calculations, we used the FaithFool's point system.

Finally, after you've successfully made it through your wedding ceremony and reception, don't forget to check back with us to loosely estimate the odds that you and your spouse will make it to your Xth anniversary!