Every name on the first draft felt necessary, right up until we had to choose between two of them on the same page.
The first list ran to two hundred and six names, written over a single evening with a bottle of wine and a great deal of confidence. Fernwater seats a hundred and twenty at the long table, with a little room to spare, which meant something close to half the list had to come off.
How we actually did it
Not gently, and not in one sitting. We split the list by how recently each name had been part of either of our lives in the last two years, which sounds clinical and felt worse than clinical while we were doing it. A great aunt who writes every Christmas stayed. A university flatmate neither of us had spoken to since a wedding four years ago did not.
We split the list by the last two years, which sounds clinical and felt worse than clinical.
The names that caused an argument
Three names, and we will not say which three. What we will say is that the arguments were never really about the people. They were about what the day was for, and who it belonged to, and how a room of a hundred and twenty is a different shape of day than a room of two hundred.
We ended on a hundred and eighteen, with two seats held back for the inevitable. If you are starting this process, start it earlier than you think you need to, and expect at least one evening that does not go well.
