My fiance and I are footing the bill. Do we need to allow his parents to invite people? His mom and dad invited people to his sisters wedding we don't know. I feel like since budget is an issue, we shouldn't have to invite people we have never met and never heard of. HELP!!!
Re: Guest List Questions
I'm not sure what proper ettiquette would be, but I agree with you. FI and I are also footing the bill ourselves, and we are desiging the guest list ourselves. We want our wedding to be full of people we love who love us. When you look around at everyone, do you want to be like "Oh, Aunt Sarah looks like she's having fun. David seems to be enjoying the cake. And that guy is really...wait, who is that guy?"
It seems to me that your parents' friends who you've never even met are probably not going to care whether or not they've been invited. If I got invited to the wedding of someone neither I or FI actually knew, I'd be like "Why the heck did they invite ME?"
But that's just what I think.
If you are paying then their guest list is basically a wish list that you can go off of. You can pick a set amount that you are willing to pay for and tell them thats their limit that you'll pay for. For example say something like we would love to be able to invite everyone on your guest list but do to budgeting we are only able to pay for 40 of them. Could you please either narrow it down to 40 people, or if you would still like all of them to be invited we are going to need you to cover the cost of the extras.
Since you are paying you have the power to cross off any guests that you don't want at your wedding but your FILs will be in your life for a long time so it would be nice to let them invite some people.
I advise AGAINST allowing them to pay for additional people. Because then you also have to allow YOUR parents to pay for additional people. And the 100 person wedding you wanted is suddenly 180 people.
In addition, the pp cost has to include the TOTAL pp cost: additional people means additional tables, linens, centerpieces, invitations, favors, postage, programs, and more that I've probably forgotten.
For me the bigger issue is though, that you're paying, and you know how many guests you want to celebrate with. Give them a limit, and stick to it.
GL
40/112