My fiancee' and I are planning to reserve our ceremony and reception venue next month and put down a down payment. Both sets of our parents are divorced; however, both of his parents remarried. We both have large families (excluding the step-families) and are trying to keep our guest list around 175 ppl. My fiancee's relationship with his step-mother hasn't been the greatest, but it's improved drastically over the past few years. This being said, he's never had any problems with her family but only sees them occasionally.
We sent our guest list to our parents and gave them the option of adding, deleting, or substituting a few people (and told them that our budget only allows up to 175 ppl) on the list and mentioned that we would consider their requests. Keep in mind, we're footing the bill for our wedding (with some help from my mother). His father responds that he wanted to add about 20 more people from the step-mother's family that were not included on our list. Adding these people would increase the price by a couple of thousand dollars, which we are not interested in paying because we aren't willing to pay that money just to invite them. My FFIL stated that there can possibly be some subsidizing of the funds. I'm assuming that this means that he'll help to pay to invite the step-family.
My questions are: Should we go ahead and reserve our venue for 175 ppl that fits our budget and not include the extra 20+ people until we know for sure that he'll pay for them?(Keep in mind, we will be able to pay monthly and adding these people would make our montly payments higher). Also, should we ask for this money upfront if we add his extra guests? My issue with this is that I don't want us to be responsible for paying for people that were not on our guest list. These aren't people that we see often (I haven't even met most of them and my FI didn't feel that it was necessary to invite them in the first place, his Dad is requesting that they be added). Sorry so long. Thanks
