Difficult Mother in Law

Martins2Be

Would it be really awful to cut down on my future Mother-in-Laws guest list if she refuses to contribute anything (even rehearsal dinner) to the wedding?

kalie1

How many people does she want to invite?  I asked my future MIL who she wanted to invite when I was working on the guest list, because I knew she'd have some close friends that she would want to attend.  Basically, she was invited to their kid's wedding so she wanted to invite them to hers.  I think she had about 2 or 3 couples, some with kids, that she wants to invite, so like 6-10 people total which isn't too bad.

If she has a lot more than that, tell her that you can't afford to spend an extra x dollars for all of them, so please cut the list in half to the ones she wants to invite the most, or she can pay the costs of the meals, etc for the other half that she wants to invite. 

And maybe your fiance should be the one to talk to his mother about this, if you think she will be really offended by you doing it.

duckie1905

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_reception-ideas_difficult-mother-law?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:5Discussion:322221d5-fc9d-429c-a7b3-e2d8b6eb0ac8Post:b4a72801-bc51-475e-8b78-a39bf77f9531">Difficult Mother in Law</a>:
[QUOTE]Would it be really awful to cut down on my future Mother-in-Laws guest list if she refuses to contribute anything (even rehearsal dinner) to the wedding?
Posted by Martins2Be[/QUOTE]
It isn't required that anyone contribute to your wedding.  <div>
</div><div>With that being said, if her personal guest list is extremely out of proportion with either what you can afford or the numbers that everyone else has I don't think you would be wrong to ask her to cut her list down.  Or, give her a number that you can reasonably afford and ask her that if she wants to increase her list beyond that number she needs to cover the cost of the extra guests.<div>
</div><div>But, let your FI handle this, you should not be having these discussions with her.  I also don't think that you should force her to cut her list as punishment for not contributing.  If her guest list contains family and family friends that also mean something to your FI I think it would be best to let him and his mother decide on what is reasonable based on the budget.</div></div>

Martins2Be

I didn't mean for that to come off as I'm punishing her. She just knows the financial situation and wants so many of her ideas in the wedding that are costly but refuses to help. Plus, this comes right after telling her we were moving in together

duckie1905

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_reception-ideas_difficult-mother-law?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:5Discussion:322221d5-fc9d-429c-a7b3-e2d8b6eb0ac8Post:94a2a9a5-dfb4-426d-8b71-05432c10e6dd">Re: Difficult Mother in Law</a>:
[QUOTE]I didn't mean for that to come off as I'm punishing her. She just knows the financial situation and wants so many of her ideas in the wedding that are costly but refuses to help. Plus, this comes right after telling her we were moving in together
Posted by Martins2Be[/QUOTE]
If she isn't paying she doesn't get to make decisions.  I would still give her a reasonable guest list for the size/budget of the wedding but that's the nice thing about paying your own way.  You get to make the decisions yourself.

megk8oz

If she's not contributing to the budget, then she doesn't get to contribute that much to the guest list. I know there's some people here who might think that's a little harsh, but FI and I are footing the entire bill ourselves, and I know that if his mother starting tacking on a bunch of people that FI hardly knew, he'd be having a talk with her. Just like if my mother was doing the same thing, I'd be sitting her down and making her aware that I just can't add everybody and that she'd have to understand that.

My grandmother actually was a bit difficult with wanting to add all of these distand cousins that I rarely see. She's not helping with the wedding (I'm one of 17 grandchildren, and have 4 siblings of my own, so it honestly would not be fair if she did), but she's always been incredibly generous with me my entire life, so I felt bad saying "no" to her, but I knew I couldn't invite everybody on her "list" without cutting people that FI and I actually wanted to invite (My grandmother seemed to be forgetting that FI's family would be invited to the wedding, too, lol). I finally crunched all of the numbers, and one day sat down with her and showed her exactly how much extra it was going to cost me to invite every single person she wanted (Her list was a little over 20 people, our venue charges $100 a head), and then reminded her (gently) that FI and I weren't really receiving any help because of our parents' situations, but if she could cut her list down to something more reasonable, I'd do what I could to make it work.

She actually took it very well, and explained her reasons for wanting to invite all of those people. I come from a very large family, we usually only see these people at weddings and funerals, and in the last several years there haven't been any weddings and an abudance of funerals, so she really just wanted to see all of these people and have it be for something HAPPY for a change.  Then, we wound up cutting down her list to something FI and I could afford and still made her happy (Roughly half of her original list).

I'm not saying you're in the exact same situation, but maybe your FI needs to have a similar discussion with her and then just give her a flat number of people she can invite. If her "must have" number is larger than what you can afford, then see if there's some sort of compromise you can make with her on the cuts or if she's willing to pay for her overage. If she's not willing to bend on anything, then you need to stand your ground: it's your money, you can only spend so much of the budget on keeping the parents happy.

Best of Luck!

tlv204

It's not her job to contribute, but since you have a budget to follow I'd just give her some guidelines instead of flat out cutting it in half. Maybe give her a number that you can afford and let her choose who makes the cut.

aerinpegadrak

Ideally, the guest list should be divided pretty much equally between your parents, his parents, and you; whoever is paying usually gets a slightly larger portion.

I would break out the guest list and have FI tell her, "We can afford to invite X number of people from your guest list.  If you need to invite more, the cost is $Y per person."  Be sure to factor into that cost food, drink, invitations, programs, centerpieces, linen rentals, and anything else that goes into hosting each person.  Given that, she'll have no choice but to cut her guest list or pay up.

jenn.daniel

How many people is your mother inviting?  Tell FMIL she can have the same number.

psichick

i'm sorry but if she's not paying or at least helping she has no right to demand anything of you. it's nice of you to even ask her if there are people that she wants to invite since YOU are paying the bills. it's one thing when it's family, quite another when it's her friends.

phoeny_moonstar

I think this is something you need to discuss with your Fi. If my MIL (FMIL at the time) wanted to invite more than 10 couples/families then we would of had a problem. But that's because we had a relatively small wedding. It's all about prospective.

mbcdefg

Just say, "We can afford to invite X people off your list. So please cut it down to that number, otherwise we will do it ourselves, but we'd prefer that you do it so that we can ensure that we don't cut anyone really important to you. If you want to invite more people, we're glad to do that but we will need some help to make it happen ... it'd be $X per person, factoring in food, stationery, rentals, etc."

Ideally, your FI should be telling her this, so that you don't come across as the biitchy daughter-in-law steamrolling her precious little son's wedding.

kim2lucky

I told my future Mothe in law that we are willing to pay for 25 of her guests.  If she would like to invite more she will have to pay the difference.  Then I asked her to cut down her list or my Fiance would just select 25 of the people he knew.  She finally cut down her list after I was firm about it!