shower invites

greinburg

I asked my future MIL for a guest list to give my SIL who is hosting my shower. She gave me a glimpse yesterday and its pretty long. I only invited 10-15 because my family is all out of state so I invited a few close friends of me and my family. However, it seems she is inviting every woman she knows. Everyone she works with is on the list as well as everyone my fiance works with. Anyone else have this problem? I am just going to feel kind of akward when i don't know hardly anyone at  my own shower. and my fiance doesn't want everyone to feel obligated to go or buy a gift. i thought showers were for closest family/friends. am i wrong?

SuMmErKuTiE

No, you're not wrong at all. Bridal showers are for your close family and female friends who are also invited to the wedding. No one should be invited to the shower if they are not also invited to the wedding. A Bridal Shower should be a much more intimate affair compared to the wedding and the bride should have the final say on the guest list. That's why usually the host will ask the bride for a list of who should be invited and then does the planning from there.

You and your FI should sit down with your FMIL and explain to her that you had wanted to keep this more intimate and for it to just be your close family and friends and that you're not comfortable with her inviting a bunch of people you don't know aside from the fact that it's very rude to invite people to a pre-wedding party when they're not invited to the wedding. It can come off as gift grabby, even though you nor your FI never intended it to be that way. Bottom line is your FMIL will appear to be the rude one if she goes through with this not you so don't worry. But, you should definitely try talking to her about the guest list and what about it is making you uncomfortable. GL and HTH!

loop0406

I hope everyone invited to shower is also on wedding guest list

Whippet8

everyone who is invited to the shower should also be invited to the wedding...maybe because (I assume) you have the wedding guest list already,and you asked her who to invite, she assumed you were giving her free range.

Kristin789

You're right.
Showers I've been to have ranged from 10 to 22 people.

greinburg

I actually do not have the wedding guest list yet. I have mine made but don't have a list from her yet. my FSIL said at her wedding she invited a ton of people too, so i assume she will want all the people on the shower list on the wedding list as well. However, i have concerns over a huge wedding guest list because my parents are paying for the reception, not his. so they will be feeding all these people. i think she is basically inviting all girls she would invite to the wedding, but i think its usually more intimate, i didn't invite even close to all the girls on my guest list.  

but i also am wary of hurting her feelings because they were already hurt a little. apparently she wanted to throw me a shower becasue i am from an hour away so she thought she could do one on her own and i would have another one where i am from. but i have no family in state so i preferred having one somewhere in between our two parents for everyone.(we r actually having it closer to his family which i thought was nice of my family to do) i also wanted my SIL (bridesmaid) to plan it as she has been around since i was 10, knows me better, and its usually a bridesmaid thing not MIL thing. so she is already a little hurt that she is not planning the shower. i think my problem is i don't want to hurt anyones feelings but know its going to be akward

greinburg

looking at my previous posts i feel very selfish, sorry. i really am grateful that ppl would want to celebrate with me, i am just not a center of attention kind of gal, so am feeling uncomfortable with the idea of a huge party of ppl i don't know

kat_hi

This is a similar issue that I'm having. I'm inviting about 10 ladies (wedding of 50 guests). FI's grandmother said I dont get to choose who comes to my shower. She wants to invite every female coming to my wedding. That seems silly to me as the shower should be a time to thank the women you are closest to and to have some girl talk before the wedding :-).  The wedding is small enough that we'll still be able to say hi to everyone, and these are all people we are close to anyway, so its not like we wont see them later.  I just feel gift grabby and I dont like large parties.