I'm not really sure how to handle this one. My fiance's family is of Apostolic faith. (We are not.) Typically they have fairly large weddings during their church service on Sundays. The reception is put together by all the women attending the church and they congregate to another buliding or area at the church for the reception where the whole church also attends.
Typically they invite most of the women from the church also to the showers.
To go more into detail we did have a child out of wedlock (which has been quite an issue) but we finally decided to get married (which we are very excited about). When we had our child they had a HUGE shower for me. There were between 40-50 women and I did not know the vast majority of the people there. It was although somewhat awkward but very overwhelmingly heart warming that they were so giving despite the fact that we were not married.
His family is all aware that it is not going to be at the church. Aside from his parents paying the deposit for the hall, they are not paying for the wedding but are very involved in the planning. His mother just told me that they are planning on having another large shower for me. We have allowed them to add some friends to the guest list but we cannot afford to invite all these people very generous people who we don't know.
Not sure how to handle this...
