My FMIL has just recently sent me their familiy's guest list. I went through it for the first time today and had to take a lot of really deep breaths because there were a lot of problems. I won't get into all of them, but one of the biggest things is she did not indicate who was to be invited with a guest and half of her list was single names. As you can imagine, including each of these people with a guest significantly increases the guest list. If they all bring a guest, we will have invited 101 people from just my FI's family. Also, I noticed there were quite a few people missing, such as my FI's cousins and even his neice. These are people who I know they are on good terms with so my only conclusion is that FMIL simply forgot, so that increases the total again. I believe she was being "generous" with the list, inviting more rather than less because it is her opinion that most will not come. There are so many things wrong with this! I simply do not feel comfortable inviting more people than we can because "most won't come anyway". I believe it also sends the message that "Hey, we know you won't be able to make it, but that's ok because all we're interested in is a gift." Poor taste. So, I need to find out if these people won't come because they are from out of town, finacial burden, or are just too far removed. Because my actions will depend on the reasons. Is my thinking correct? If we know they won't come, why are we sending invitations to these people? Especially since we are working with capacity limits at our venues. I have asked her to clarify who is to bring a guest, but haven't said anything about making cuts. My fiance is deployed, so the amount of help he will be able to give is limited. How do I explain to them that I don't want to invite more people than I can because they say most won't come?
It happens when you're not looking.