Guest List issues and etiquette...

jenblack301

How do you tactfully tell the mother inlaw that she can't invite every single person she knows? Her side of the guest list is over 100 and since there are so many of them there is no room for my side of the family...We have discussed this issue before and nothing changes! What is the  etiquette for this? 

MnMShaw

I do believe I wrote this word for word about 3 years ago while planning my wedding. You decided the amount of people you will be able to have at your wedding and you say that your mom can invite X amount of people and your mother in law can invite X amount of people, no more and let her make her list from there. You also tell your FI to deal with his mom and stand firm.  With my MIL, if I said no about anything she got her feelings hurt and it was a big deal but if my DH said anything to her, it went over much better.  Not only that, if you aren't set on a number of people to come, your venue definitely has a max amount of people that can be present that you can't come over.

 Your FI just needs to tell her "As much as we would really like to invite every person we know, there just is not room at our venue.  Unfortunately we have to limit it to our closest friends and families.  Only X amount of people can attend and therefore, we have alotted X amount of people for you and X amount of people for the other mother to invite to the wedding. "

And if your MIL is anything like mine, he will have to play that comment on repeat.   Just remember, it's your wedding, your decisions!

Future Ramsey

I think the pp is probably the best way to deal with it.  Let your FI tell his Mom that she can't invite every person that she wants . . . give her a number of people and let her decide who makes her side of the list.

My FMIL let us send out all of our save the date cards and now that it is time for the invites to go out, she's changed her mind for a few people . . . I'm like 'hello, we already sent them a save the date'. I'm letting my FI handle things with his Mom though. It's amazing how things went so well for so long and now that the wedding is looming near, these little stressors are popping up out of no where.

BabyBlueNTexas

We have told my FMIL that we are only inviting people that we absolutely had to have there and that we were trying to keep it an intimate affair. We also allowed her more invites, as long as she covered the cost difference from the original count, to include her other invites.

rerawalt

We are doing the same as above.  Our limitations on the guest list are mostly budget (we are paying the wedding ourselves).  Everyone gets the same number of invites, my FMIL wanted  more people so she's paying for however many are over her limit.