so save the date cards have been mailed. the guest list finalized..everything looking smooth. We have 150 on the list..hoping for 140 (our budget) and we felt its a pretty sure bet that about 10 ppl would say they can't make it. Ideally we could afford to ask everyone we love and like.. truthfully, we are paying for the wedding almost comepletly by ourselves and just can't afford 300 ppl at our wedding.140 is ok, MAYBE 150..
so i called my mother a few weeks ago to ask which family needs to be invited and which not..becasue there is a lot of family i have lost touch with growing up. she cut her 10 cousins and added some other relatives. These 10 cousins I have seen once in my adult life although most of them are local. 1 is on my FB and he never talks to me. these cousins are about 15-20 years older than me. I used to call them uncles when i was a kid. The only time I saw them as an adult was my great uncle's birthday a couple years back.. I introduced my FI to one of them as this i smy uncle M. and "uncle M." says "I'm not your uncle." It was very awkward and although i was invited to get together more often..it didn't happen
now its about 2 years later.. my great unlcle is in the hospital very ill.. he happens to be on the unit I work on.. so I see my cousins daily for the last week. I did not bring up my wedding.. my great aunt said something about it and then two of my cousins said they were planning on attending.
I was shocked. My sister invited all these cousins to her wedding and they all declined. I think the only reason they are "planning to attend mine" is because they are seeing me a lot lately and they think it's polite to pretent they want to go to my wedding.
so it looks like this to me:
2 cousins genuinely want to attend
1 cousin and great aunt politley want to attend
2 cousins have barely said anything to me and probably don't vcare at all
meanwhile there are 2 cousins (+1) on my FIs side that are also unexpectantly planning on attending that we weren't planning to invite
save the date cards wqent out and now we have 14 extra guests that plan to attend that we cannot afford.. and they are family!!
I have no idea what to do.. any help is helpful!