So... long time lurker with a question. My fiance and I are planning a wedding for about 100 people, we are paying for it ourselves and are very budget minded. My fiance's family thinks that we should be sending a much larger part of his family invitiations - this would put the total invited at something like 200 people. Now my FMIL assures us that none of these people will actually come, but we think its poor form to send invitations to people that we don't actually want/expect/plan on coming. So we offered to purchase announcements and send them out on the day of our wedding to everyone that she wants to make aware of our wedding. She thinks this is cold, and that we would offend family members by sending them an announcement rather than an invitation. However, we simply cannot afford more guests, and even though she feels very confident they won't actually come - what if they do?? I don't want to offend her, or his family, but what we can afford is what we can afford.
How would you handle this situation?