I need to vent a little... and receive some advice from my fellow August 2013 brides.
In short, my fiance and I are solely planning and paying for our wedding. His family lives about 2 hours from where our wedding will take place. We've planned our rehearsal dinner, set the seating chart, sent invites to the bridal party, parents, and grandparents who are invited, etc. As it turns out, many of his family members are making a weekend of it and coming into town on Friday prior to the 5:30pm Saturday wedding. I'm perfectly fine with this. If they want to come into town for the weekend and shop, attend local events happening, etc, cool. Come to find out, my fiance's mother has invited approximately 8 family members (that we know of) who are arriving a day early to the rehearsal dinner... not only does this completely mess up logistics (the room can only hold 40 people... her extra invites have us at 42!), it also is a budget nightmare. I'm still a little shocked and not quite sure how to handle the situation. I wouldn't be as opposed if 1) she was helping plan/pay for the dinner and 2) if the room could hold everyone. Do we just set a cap on who's been invited (and try to squeeze people in) and accommodate the extra people in order to avoid any awkward family drama? Or do we ask her to "uninvite" people... especially when this is going to bust our rehearsal dinner budget completely and add unnecessary stress (for my fiance and I) to the evening? I'm trying to stay positive and be thankful that we found out now rather than having "surprise" guests show up at the dinner, but this is definitely not a welcomed situation. Any advice would be great!