Wedding Etiquette Forum

Small Wedding-Cutting Guest List

My fiance and I are paying for our own wedding, very small, keeping it to immediate family and close friends only. Our guest list is around 25. We live across the country from our families, so it is kind of a destination wedding for most people anyways. My mom said that it would be incredibly rude to have friends at a wedding and not invite her and my father's siblings, etc. She and my dad both come from large families, however, and including just the aunts and uncles from my side would add another 15+ people. Then we add my fiance's aunts and uncles and all of a sudden we have a 60+ person wedding (doesn't even include cousins) when we wanted it to be under 30. Hmmm. We're having a reception 4 months after the wedding back where our families are from, and my parents are paying for that. I figured we could just invite everyone then. Is that rude? Or we could invite aunts and uncles and hope they rsvp "no," but that is a gamble. I can't be the first person to wonder about this. How do you keep a small wedding small?

Re: Small Wedding-Cutting Guest List

  • You pay, you set the guest list.

    It's your wedding, not a family reunion (which it sounds like your mom is hosting afterwards anyway).

    It's not rude to have friends but not Aunts and Uncles.  It's only "rude" in your mom's eyes, because that's the way SHE wants it to be.
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  • We're in the same boat. There are way too many aunts, uncles, and cousins to invite any of them, but we are inviting friends. Our family isn't giving us any issues though, in part I think, because we've stayed firm on the guest list from the beginning.

    Whoever is writing the check has a say in the guest list, which in your case is you.
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  • In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_small-wedding-cutting-guest-list?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding BoardsForum:9Discussion:69edd094-6c6a-4d8c-b9da-5eef2143b0b9Post:f2b8a536-2349-48a4-be78-d7af12b89f1e">Small Wedding-Cutting Guest List</a>:
    [QUOTE]My fiance and I are paying for our own wedding, very small, keeping it to immediate family and close friends only. Our guest list is around 25. We live across the country from our families, so it is kind of a destination wedding for most people anyways. My mom said that it would be incredibly rude to have friends at a wedding and not invite her and my father's siblings, etc. She and my dad both come from large families, however, and including just the aunts and uncles from my side would add another 15+ people. Then we add my fiance's aunts and uncles and all of a sudden we have a 60+ person wedding (doesn't even include cousins) when we wanted it to be under 30. Hmmm. We're having a reception 4 months after the wedding back where our families are from, and my parents are paying for that. I figured we could just invite everyone then. Is that rude? Or we could invite aunts and uncles and hope they rsvp "no," but that is a gamble. I can't be the first person to wonder about this. How do you keep a small wedding small?
    Posted by emils1987[/QUOTE]

    My wedding had 30 guests.  My brother's wedding had 28.  We each did this on purpose for several reasons, not the least of which is that neither of us was interested in hosting our parents' parties.  We invited only immediate family, our closest friends and cousins with whom we are extremely close.

    My wedding was in Philadelphia, his was in Savannah.  Our family had to travel from Cincinnati (including my SIL's family).  DH's family came from San Fransisco.  For my wedding it was a DW for all but four guests.

    SIL's parents hosted a reception in Cincinnati for them and invited the extended family to that.  Everyone was fine with it.  DH's dad is hosting a reception for us next month in California for his big fat Greek family and if the presents that are rolling in are any indication, nobody has a problem with this one either.

    The small weddings are the best kind because you actually get to spend time with your guests and very little is regimented - it's more like a cocktail party.  My parents loved my brother's wedding and were really excited that DH and I were planning the same thing. 

    I also got to spend more time on things like the OOT bags and making sure the guests treated the weekend as a mini-vacation.  My friend told me today that three weeks later she is still acting like Philadelphia's travel ambassador because even though she's been here a dozen times already, until she got the OOT bag to guide her, she hadn't <em>really </em>seen it.

    Stick to your guns.  You are paying for this wedding.  Tell mom if she feels that strongly about it she can host a reception later.
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  • Your original plan sounds better, go with your list, let your parents pay for reunion reception
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  • My mother has attempted to pull the same guilt trip with me. She wants me to send invitations to her three sisters. Two of them I haven't even seen in 20+ years. Neither of them ever acknowledged my birthday, high school/college/law school graduation. I was friends with them on FB, and then one of them freaked out when I posted I was getting married - she thought I'd eloped and posted a nasty message on my Wall and then unfriended me.

    I told my mother I wasn't doing obligation invites. The people who have meant the most to me over the years will be invited, and her crazy family members who wouldn't recognize me on the street can just deal with it.
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