Who to invite to a wedding with several celebrations

Whatever the tradition calls them, the celebrations of a multi-day wedding have three guest lists. A sangeet — the music night before an Indian wedding — and the wedding itself. A kına gecesi, the Turkish henna night, a nikah and a düğün. A Moroccan henna, the aqd (the marriage contract) and the walima. A traditional ceremony in one family’s town and a white wedding in another. The lists overlap, but never completely, and the overlap is precisely where it goes wrong. Whoever takes the big evening’s list as the base and adds two columns finds out halfway through that the henna list cannot be cut out of it.

Each list is bounded by something different. The henna night by what fits in someone’s home or a small hall. The ceremony by the room where it happens — a register office, a mosque, a mandap under a tent — which has a fixed number of places. The party by the hall and by what you spend. So build them in that order: first the smallest, then the middle one, then the largest.

The henna list is a decision about intimacy. The party is a decision about a hall and a budget. Whoever starts with the party turns the henna night into a subtraction, and everyone taken off the big list notices.

So write the smallest list without looking at the other two. Who would you miss that evening? Usually the women of both families, the aunts your mother calls herself, and the friends you had before you had a partner. Only afterwards do you check whether the number fits the room.

Sort by group, not by name. When the hall says three hundred and twenty and your list says three hundred and eighty, you cut a group. Cutting names is a conversation per person, and there are sixty of them.

The four edge cases below cost more time together than all the other names combined. Decide them once, at the table, and write the rule down — not the decision per person, but the rule. The next case is then an application, not an argument.

One line per person, not per invitation. Beside it, three columns — one per celebration — with yes, no or not decided yet in each. That third state is the most important one: an empty box looks the same as a no, and that is how someone quietly disappears from your wedding.

Add one column that says how you know someone: which side of the family, which branch, or “work”. That is the column you cut on when the hall names a number.

Count people, never invitations. A hundred and twenty invitations is not a hundred and twenty chairs, and the hall counts chairs.

This is how the diary keeps it: the celebrations are not extra days but separate events, each with its own guest list and its own answers. Someone on two of the three stands once in your list and counts in two celebrations. The list comes in from Excel or from your contacts, by household, and every household’s answers land per celebration, counted in people.

The henna list hears first, usually by phone and usually from the mothers. The rest hear from the invitation. Make sure nobody learns from a forwarded link that they are not invited somewhere.

That is possible, because every guest gets their own link and sees only the celebrations they are asked to. One thing is worth saying out loud: a forwarded link is the sender’s invitation, not the receiver’s. Whoever forwards their link to a cousin sends their own name and their own celebrations along with it.

Answering takes no account and no password. A guest first confirms the last four digits of their own mobile number; guests whose number you do not have go straight through.