Basically I asked his Mom at the beginning of May for her list. I obviously had one drafted for a while, so I sent her the names for their side, and expected to get back maybe a few additional names, and the missing addresses. Fast forward to the past few weeks(months later!), we've been asking them for it, they keep procrastinating. So I guess she was doing it on the computer, but didn’t save it, and then his Dad came and closed her out of it without saving it(likely story! He works in IT, and would probably know to save a close, especially if it prompted). So she was hand writing it and mailing it and we got it last night. So my guess is that they tried to buy all of this time because they never thought about it at all, and since we’ve been asking for the past few weeks, they finally got on the ball and wrote something down. Wouldn’t you talk about it, get your Christmas card list out and plug it into the spreadsheet that you were sent? And if the people you are listing are not on your Christmas card list, then they shouldn't be coming to our wedding, right?
I know, I have to remember to breathe!
So the list has some of the names and addresses that I sent her, and an additional dozen or so people that I've never met and FI doesn't even know who a bunch of them are! Basically we think that they are her cousins.
We were at 150 without that list, and that was even going to be tight with the budget, we were hoping for the 20% declines so that we'd be down to 120 which would be so much more manageable! And believe me we've trimmed, I even said only 1st cousins, and I have probably over 60 first cousins, but I'm not inviting all of them!
So what we've decided is that they get however many places they give us money for, I know it sounds bad, but I have to treat it like a business transaction! We're paying for everything ourselves, so it will help us in that way
So I realize that I'm getting too overworked about this, but I would love to hear how other people worked out guests situations with their FIL's.