I'm having a wedding in the town my FI and I live in, which is a few hour drive from where my FI's family is from. We booked a venue with enough room for 175 guests, which is plenty for family and friends. My future MIL wants to invite about 50 of her friends, which I'm assuming are actually acquaintances since no person could possibly have that many friends. Right now the guest list is about 50-50 between our sides and neither or my parents wanted to invite their friends.
We compromised early on that her close friends would be invited to the wedding and we would then do a second reception in her home town for her acquaintances to come to. We thought briefly about inviting everyone and hopping that only some of them would come, but I wouldn't want to risk everyone RSVPing.
I've been reading that second receptions aren't thought of well here, especially since this will be for people not invited to the wedding. Is there a way to do this that won't make people feel B - listed? My MIL has talked about rolling it into a house warming party they wanted to through anyway.
My feeling is that most of these people could care less about going to a wedding where they haven't met the bride or groom (or at best these are people who would have last seen my FI when he was a teenager). My MIL feels that not inviting everyone in her circle to at least something wedding related would be rude and I guess she would know these people better than me.