Children and Invites

DavidandRachel

My fiance's family is huge and so we were not able to invite his cousin's kids.
My family on the other hand is smaller and my cousins kids were invited.
Is it to be expected his family may have their nose out of joint?
How do we avoid any awkwardness on our wedding day or in the time after?
Suggestions please!

Ninica_84

Are the kids on both sides the same age? Or are one set 10 and the other ones 20 years old? I would expect some comments from his side as to why your side was invited to bring kids and his wasn't.

Littlin

I had the same trouble - my family is huge and I have a ton of cousins, and my Fi's family is smaller.  We capped it at a certain age no matter which family, so there would be no hurt feelings from either side.  Now thinking about it I wish I had made the cap age even higher as our numbers are getting up there, but I have already sent out save the dates so we're locked in.

If you haven't sent the invites, maybe delegate to a parent or even own up to it yourselves and simply call and say that you had to cap it to be fair to both families and for budget reasons - I think they would understand.  

If that's impossible at this point, you may get some negativity from his side, but since its your wedding day, no one should bother you, and at least you won't have to deal with it until after the wedding.

Hope that helps!

kaesha

God, I wouldn't want to deal with lingering embitterment after a wedding. Weddings, IMO, should be about community, not pushing people away. I think you definitely need to invite some from both sides or none. I like the age limit idea.

ring_pop

Yikes. Without knowing more about your family dynamic, I'm going to guess that yes, there will be drama and hurt feelings.

He can't help that his family is large, so you shouldn't give your family preferential treatment just because your family is smaller.

Your bio says that your wedding is in July, which I assume means that your invitations haven't gone out yet. (If they have... you're waaay early) It's not too late to consider who to invite and who not to. Consider your guest list in "waves" (e.g. immediate family, then aunts/uncles, then cousins, then cousins' kids) and give everyone who's the same "distance" from you equal treatment.

There are exceptions of course; for me, we invited my husband's second cousins but not mine, because he is very close to his. But my point is that you can't penalize him for having a large family.

rkto

yes, you can "penalize " him.
for our wedding, my mom got to choose 50 people and my FMIL gets to chose her own 50 people... they can pick whoever they want. 
then we get to choose 50 people of our own
that seemed fair for us