Invites

mommy0700

I'm planning my wedding for the summer of 2010.  I'm not sure if I should invite distant family members or not.  I think I'm going to invite all my mothers siblings, but I'm not sure if its rude or not to not invite my cousins also.  They are first cousins, but growing up we lived in different states and really only saw each other at reunions and such.  Also, I graduated college in 2008 and keep in touch with just a few friends from school, do I invite them or not?  (We talk via facebook mostly)I just don't want people thinking, "why didn't I get invited" or "why did she invite me?" Any advice would be so greatly appreciated.

danieliza1127

It really all depends on your budget.  You need to figure out how much your ceremony and reception venue costs, what your budget is, and therefore how many people you can invite.  Then start with only closest family members and friends and see if you still have room in the budget and guest list to include more.  If so, start branching out.  I have a bunch of first cousins that I haven't seen in 15 or 20 years, so I didn't invite any of them to our wedding.  I was never invited to any of theirs either.  So no big deal.  My H is close to all of his cousins though and we see them several times a year, so we did invite his.  As far as your FB friends, you don't have to invite them.  If you don't see people socially then you really don't need to invite them.  I'm sure they wouldn't even expect an invitation.  Same goes for coworkers, if you don't hang out with them outside of work, no invitation. 

Soon-to-be Mrs. Vogt

We used the rule of thumb that if we hadn't spoken to them in 6 months (either via phone, email, FB, in person, whatever), then they were definitely out. That helped us cut our list way down. From there, we went ahead and invited them (because it fit in our budget). A bunch of our guest list didn't attend because they were OOT, which we expected, but you can't count on that.If you need to cut it down even further, think about some of your FB friend - if they were in town, would you make sure to meet up with them for dinner? If not, then I wouldn't invite them. Same goes for some of your distant family.Hope that helps!

mandapanda78

No matter what you do,  you're going to have some people wondering why they did/did not get an invite. If you start out trying to please everyone you're going to lose your mind very quickly. Decide on who you absolutely want to be there, what your budget is and work from there. Good luck!

ffmaid

It is a matter of budget, affection, and family dynamics. All of which you know much better then we do.

tidetravel

It all depends on your budget (what can you afford), your expectations of your wedding (do you and FI want a large/small event), and your family dynamics.  If parents are helping to pay, you should take into consideration their wishes/expectations as well.We figured out how many people we could afford, and then used a tiered system for invites.  If/when we got to a tier that we couldn't fully accomodate, no one from that tier got an invite:1st tier - immediate family (parents/siblings/grandparents)2nd tier - close friends (people we each have an intimate relationship with)3rd tier - extended family (aunts/cousins/etc.)4th tier - co-workers and more distant friends

ac_in_dc

I think aunts & uncles can be invited without inviting adult cousins (your mom & dad will probably enjoy having thier siblings there). And you can invite a handful of cousins, all, or none, just don't invite a majority of them without inviting all of them. Does that make sense?Don't worry about folks being upset re:invitations. Most mature people understand that everyone has their own budget & family size where weddings are concerned and don't get their panties in a bunch over getting an invite.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

Many people don't invite their entire extended families. In my family, we don't usually invite second cousins because we would easily end up inviting over 200 family members (just on my side of the family). However, cutting the list down to just my own aunts/uncles/cousins as well as parents and siblings - I'm down to 9 on my side.I would, however, do it in tiers. Either invite all cousins or no cousins. OR invite only the in-town cousins, whom I assume you are closer to than OOT cousins. That way it doesn't look like you chose randomly based on favorites.