My FILs are ridiculous, and want to invite more people than our venue can hold. A lot more. They are contributing, so they do get somewhat of a say, but they're not paying for all of it, so they don't get the total say. My FMIL has a large family and feels obligated to invite everyone. Fortunately, my FI and I have been able to talk a moderate amount of sense into them to make them realize it is just not physically possible to invite all of the people they'd like. Unfortunately, we have not been able to talk all of the sense into them we need to, so they're trying to figure out how to "alert" people of the wedding, but not have them come. I think this is tacky. Their suggestion is to send invites out to some of these people a week before the wedding, so that they do not have time to make arrangements to come, but they're still invited. 1. This is not acceptable to me, and extremely tacky and embarrassing 2. The people could still decide to come and we'd still have a problem. My compromise is to send out wedding announcements, but I was wondering if this is still done? I think it makes us look like we're fishing for gifts (I dont care about the gifts). What other options are there other than to just not invite some of these people and not send anything (this is my choice).