So my Fi and I are paying for the entire wedding ourselves minus the wedding rings which are a gift from my parents. Now both my parents and my in-laws are asking us to invite this coworker and that friend of the family and so on, and so on... Seeing that we're their children and because we both realise that our wedding day is something special for them as well we both see no problem in both of them asking people they'd like to share that with (for my father-in-law, friends of the family can be counted as part of the family).
But extra guests aren't free and especially not 24 extra guests in total... Our parents aren't paying any money for the wedding but we wonder if we can't ask them to pay for the guests if they want everyone to be there (not the drinks, we're having an open bar so we can't really look at that) or to see if they can't skip a few guests. A third option that's open is the fact that since we haven't ordered our caterer yet we can lower the budget/guest on the food-section.
And one extra question, if we ask them to pay for the guests they invite, does that mean we need to mention them on the wedding invitations.