Guest list questions

swtasa

If my parents are contributing to the wedding is it fair to give them more leeway on their guest list then say his parents who aren't?

Just know as well my family is much closer then his family is, people that would be include are people we talk to but more extended family...

betrothed123

IMO it should be fair across the board (not necessarily in terms of number of guests, but in terms of relationships).  So if you get to invite all of your family out to 2nd cousins, his family should get the same consideration.

SwedishChick2011

Within reason, it would be nice for your fiance's family to able to invite who they want.  If they want to include more people than you and your parents can afford, then you'll have to put a stop to that. 

swtasa

His mothers guest list is about 80 people alone with aunts and uncles and first cousins.

With close family friends, aunts, uncles and cousins ours is about 40 he has an exceptionally larger family then ours and honest we only planned on about 80-100 people

tidetravel

Yes and no.  What isn't fair is to punish his parents for not contributing.

It's not really up to you to decide who the important people are on his side of the family, and to make assumptions that since they aren't close, then they aren't important.

I would start by getting a guest list from his family and your family and decide if you can accomodate all of the people on those lists.  If you can't, I would invite in tiers -

1)  immediate family
2) close friends
3) extended family
4) family friends/co-workers

Make sure that each family is represented evenly across each tier.  IE.  if you invite your cousins, you should invite his too.

Or, you can give your parents and his parents a specific number of people that they can invite, and they can decide who to invite within their number.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that IMO, its not fair for your parents to invite "extra people" if it means excluding important people on his side

tidetravel

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_guest-list-questions?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding BoardsForum:9Discussion:2a0e65da-8a2a-4108-b2af-011c0056ed60Post:0cf9f870-e7c6-4726-8611-675ddf5e3d3a">Re: Guest list questions</a>:
[QUOTE]His mothers guest list is about 80 people alone with aunts and uncles and first cousins. With close family friends, aunts, uncles and cousins ours is about 40 he has an exceptionally larger family then ours and honest we only planned on about 80-100 people
Posted by swtasa[/QUOTE]

In this case, I would give your FILs a guest list count and ask them to make the cuts.  40 for your parents, 40 for his and that leaves 20 for personal invites for you and FI.

betrothed123

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_guest-list-questions?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:9Discussion:2a0e65da-8a2a-4108-b2af-011c0056ed60Post:0cf9f870-e7c6-4726-8611-675ddf5e3d3a">Re: Guest list questions</a>:
[QUOTE]His mothers guest list is about 80 people alone with aunts and uncles and first cousins. With close family friends, aunts, uncles and cousins ours is about 40 he has an exceptionally larger family then ours and honest we only planned on about 80-100 people
Posted by swtasa[/QUOTE]
In that case, I think you both need to cut a bit.  His list is only family, whereas yours has friends as well.  Cut yours to only family, and work from there.  Try to make it a bit more equal on both sides with just family, and then move on to friends.  I don't think that your parents paying=only him cutting out important people.

tb583

We have been running into the same issue to a point.  My parents are paying for the venue, catering, alcohol, etc.  and my mom stated that they could afford to pay for a certain # of people based on the dinner and alcohol package we chose.  FI, my parents, and I finalized the guest.  FI was raised by his grandparents and only calls FI when she needs money or help moving, so he did not consult her on the guestlist (in his eyes she was lucky she was even invited), he did allow for his close family to attend though.  Well FI's mom threw a fit because there was no room to invite her friends.  She offered to pay for them so I told as long as I had the cash by a certain date (before I sent out invites) we would send them invites as well.  She did not give us the money to cover them and got pissed when we told her we weren't going to invite them.  (We knew that we would be the one's that would end up fronting that bill since my parents could not afford to and she doesn't exactly have the best track record with money).

SHe then proceeded to tell me that there was about 6 or 7 couples that she could guarantee would not show up, but she wanted to us to send them invites WITH REGISTRY INFO so they could send us a gift on her behalf.  WTF.  I said I was absolutley NOT sending invites to people that we could not afford if they do decide to come and I was absolutley NOT putting registy info in our invites.  This lady is crazy!!

swtasa

I guess I'm not really explaining it right.

We went through and made our list to include certain people like our immediate family and friends people we would not want to have our wedding without. That included both sets of parents, siblings and close friends that will be in the wedding. Between that set of people we have 36 people...

We would like to keep the guest list between 115-150 people grand total. The list my mother came back with was 37 people total, his mothers list (which I got in e-mail today) is 84 people she wants on her list. His family is exceptionally larger then my family and I understand that (his mom has 9 brothers and sisters his dad has 6, my FI has 4 brothers and sisters himself)

My FI himself wants to cut down the amount of his cousins and aunts and uncles that come because he never speaks to them. We're even willing to sacrifice the amount of people we invite ourselves to be more accomidating but basically her list takes up the rest of the invitations and then some, which basically leaves us unable to invite and of our friends (which we have written and is a total of 22 people)

If I just aunts, uncles and first cousins we have 25 people.

It should also be said that some of the people on my mothers invite list are the people in the band (my fathers band is doing the reherssal) and aunt(who is our florist) and my cousin(Who is our photographer) and our pastor who is officiating the ceremony....