Guest List Help!

Sassenach1743

Hi Ladies, please send me your input on this etiquette question regarding guest list(s) for other non-wedding events...

Bridal Shower, should I just invite family and friends that are in town? Or should I still include my out of towners, even though I know they will not be able to attend? Also, I'm only planning to address the shower invites to the ladies... the shower will be hosted by my mother and FI's mother, and it's a tea party -is that okay? Or will it seem rude? 

Rehearsal Dinner, should I just limit this to bridal party and our parents? The majority of my family (Aunts & Uncles) are traveling from out of state and will be staying in the area, I would like to invite them... I feel it would be rude to exclude them seeing as they have travelled so far and I rarely see them. Can I do this? 

The reason I ask is because my guest list(s) are starting to look the same and I don't want to invite everyone that I'm inviting to the wedding to all the other events. Just seems like this is getting excessive, but I don't want to be rude either. I definitely need some input.

Thanks for reading

aragx6

1. We're having a co-ed shower, but are only inviting in-town family and close friends. Why are you addressing the invitations anyway?

2. For the RD you must invite anyone that you're asking to attend the rehearsal but after that it's all optional. Lots of people limit it only to those people while many others include all OOT guests. It's your call.

Sassenach1743

I just meant I was planning to only have the shower invites addressed to the ladies... Not that I am actually doing it. I'm not hosting; my Mom and FI's Mom are hosting, but I am supplying the guest list.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

A female-only shower is fine.

Rehearsal dinners are optional for out of town guests. It's NICE to invite them, but if you can't afford to, you can't. You must invite anyone who participates in the rehearsal and their dates, though.

FWIW, my in-laws hosted our RD and they always invite out of town family for RDs in their circle. So we had all of our out of towners. It was about 38 people when we had about 68 people at the wedding - so over half of our guests. It was very different from the wedding (even though we had appetizers, salad, entree, dessert and open bar at the RD) and I'm glad we did it that way.

Meegles4

Shower: Females only is fine. As for who to invite, that's really up to you. If your OOTers aren't close family/friends, I wouldn't invite them. But, if they are family, they may want an invitation. Even if they can't come they may send a gift, and they may want to at least feel like they're being included in the festivities.

RD: Also up to you. Who's hosting the RD? If it's not you, I'd ask the host how many people they can accommodate, or what their budget is. It's possibly you may not be able to invite OOTers if the budget doesn't accommodate it. If it does, it's a nice gesture to include them but certainly not necessary. I didn't include OOTers in mine b/c MIL was hosting and I didn't want to explode the budget, AND because I wanted to keep the RD small so it didn't feel like another wedding reception.

Mrs.B6302007

As far as sending the inviations to OOT guests whom you know won't attend:  I think this can be a situation where you are damned if you don't and damned if you do.

Personally, I give the side-eye when I receive one if it's for a shower that will cost me more to go than to give a gift (gas + hotel). If it's only a couple of hours drive either way, fine but (and this happened to me) if you live 11 hours away from me, don't send me an invitation because I'm going to interpret that as "I want you to mail me a gift because I know you won't be able to drive this far."  Now, you might have sent it to me just because I'm family or you think it's the right thing to do but there's no way for sure for me to know that and I'm not going to call you and ask you "What was your intention with this?", kwim?

 On the other hand, if I'm your Great Aunt Jane and I get my feelings hurt very easily for being overlooked or whatever, then send me an invitation so I don't call your mom and gripe about it and tell her what a horrible job she did raising you.

  I don't really think there is a right or wrong way to handle this because it really depends on the perception of the person receiving the invitation.

egm900

I live 13 hours from my family, and I feel left out when I don't receive a shower invitiation and everyone else in the family does.  With that said, I'm ambivalent about if I'm invited to OOT friends' showers.

Mrs.B6302007

If you are the only one living that far, yes, I can certainly see how you would feel left out.  I would as well,

 I should have clarified in my example that my entire immediate family and I live 20 minutes from each other.  The invitations we received were for a child (well, grown up child) of extended family who settled in a different state over 20 years ago.  We were raised here, they were raised there. And we had never met the wife/mom-to-be.