closest friends and family-seriously. How to prioritize your guest list

To start off my blogging...I would like to explain how my future husband and I decided to have a small(ish) wedding. Let me start by saying if you are having a HUGE wedding...there is no judgement here. Totally...it's just not us.

There were several factors that influenced our decision to stay fairly small in terms of guest list.
First off-we've been to too many weddings where the couple has had approximately 2 whole minutes to speak with each table of guests, before being whisked away to another table. I want to make my guests feel more important than a two minute chat...mostly about how pretty I am.
Secondly- my future husband is an introvert to the max. He enjoys his small group of friends, but quickly becomes uncomfortable in groups of more than 10 people. I, on the other hand, love big groups...it's why we work :-D.
Third-we didn't want to meet anyone new on our wedding day. Goes along with the whole "want to have as little stress as possible on our big day" thing. I don't want to have to worry about which uncle is uncle john and which one is uncle tom. We've been together for three years...if we haven't met someone yet...they're just not that important. Exceptions to this rule are those who live out of state/out of country.
Fourth-budget. While this is not a huge issue for us (we're both employed, and have no children). This keeps us at what we consider a reasonable budget. We simply don't like the idea of spending tons of money on a single day. We're much more excited about actually being married than getting there.

Now-How did we manage to keep our guest list to 50 people? Pretty easy. We prioritized. We each took a piece of paper and made three columns: Must invite, would like to invite, and maybe invite. If someone was on either of our "must invite" list...they made the cut. If someone was on both of our "maybe invite" list...they were booted. The "would like to invite" column was a little more tricky. We asked ourselves the following question: will it in some way make our special day better for them to be there? If it was a yes...then they're invited. If no, sorry.  We've already run into some issues (mainly with our parents) over our guest list. We have given slight leeway to each party, with the understanding that while we want their input and want to see them happy, ultimately it's our day.