So, my mom has a giant family. About 85 people, just counting aunts, uncles, and cousins. They're all very close-knit too. So close-knit, that 98% of them live in the same 40 mile radius. Why is this noteworthy? Because that 40 mile area is all in South Carolina. Yep, my mom is the only one who managed to move away and stay away.
This becomes a wedding-related issue for one reason: a lot of my relatives don't really travel much. They've never really had to. So I'm not expecting a lot of them to drag themselves up to Minnesota for my wedding. In fact, I've already been told that I should only expect about 15 of them to make the trip.
So... here's the pickle I'm in. My venue holds 200 people max. Between my dad's family, and both parts of my FI's family, we have a good 100 or so rekatives that will be more likely to show.
Now, I can't fathom not inviting any of my SC relatives, even the ones I know won't come. However, those 70 empty seats at the wedding could easily be filled by friends, sorority sisters, etc. BUT, I don't want to ASSUME that the estimates are correct and end up inviting too many people. On the offchance that more come than anticipated, the venue could get wayy overfilled wayy fast.
So my idea was this:
Send out invitations to all the relatives (on every side, to be fair) a little on the early side. I was thinking about 12 weeks out, with a relatively early RSVP date. Then, as "no" RSVPs come in, we start sending out slightly invitations to everyone else. After all "everyone else" will be mostly local... so they don't need as much advance notice anyway... since they don't have to make travel arrangements.
This concept had gotten mixed reviews when I brought it up on another board a long time ago... so I wanted to see what you guys thought. Is anyone going to get seriously upset if they find out I had an "A" list and a "B" list? Are there any other flaws with this idea that I'm not thinking of?