first planning fight!

jodilong81 · January 2014

So, I had what I thought to be our guest list pretty well thought out and at the right headcount for the size of wedding we are planning on having....until the fiance started on "his list" of cousins I have never heard of and their kids, friends I have never heard of and their kids, his parents friends I have never met...I am trying to explain that even though he is "sure they won't come", it is still an invitation! What if they all say yes??? We don't have the room, plus, every invitation cost $+postage! He wants to invite 50 extended family members but says only 19 will show up!!!!!!! I am so frustrated!!!

JennyColada · January 2014

I was just talking to Fi about that tonight. I was considering whether I should invite my grandparents (right now we're just having parents and his sister). He doesn't want to invite his grandparents (because then his aunt will have to bring her, which means he hasn't to invite all his other aunts and uncles and their kids so then all his cousins, etc etc).

Neither of us are extremely close with our extended family. I did catch myself saying (re: my grandparents) "well they probably wouldn't come but would appreciate the sentiment" but realized we'd be in a bind if they DID come.

Sometimes you just get so excited for the planning that you lose sight of reality.

jodilong81 · January 2014

I think that's the trouble we are having - he is just not understanding the reality of the situation, not to mention the fact that my parents are footing the bill for the whole thing, I feel bad for making it into a free for all. The last thing I want is for friends we really want to be there to be axed because his 4th cousin's step-daughters husband is coming. I guess we will just have to use this as a starting point and go from there.

mulloyas · January 2014

Yeah we ran into a little bit of that too. It's definitely frustrating, especially when you're talking about each others families. One thing that helped us is to breakdown the estimated cost per person. You may have to do a little extra research and email tentative vendors, but when you ask your fiance if his 4th cousin you've never met is worth $XX and that the funds will have to come out of the DJ, alcohol, food, budget he may think differently. My fiance was shocked at how much planning and $ goes into a wedding, so this worked pretty well to cut the guest list to those who really mattered.

jodilong81 · January 2014

Great advice - I threw out the $ per invite and that alone made him pause, hopefully a little extra digging on $$ will help with this. It just seems so wasteful and risky to invite so many 'randoms'.

MobKaz · January 2014

jodilong81 said:

Great advice - I threw out the $ per invite and that alone made him pause, hopefully a little extra digging on $$ will help with this. It just seems so wasteful and risky to invite so many 'randoms'.

Don't forget that if those 50 additional people were to attend, that is an additional 5 tables in addition to 50 meals. That means another 5 centerpieces, 50 more escort cards, and so on. And the biggest bridal mistake/rule is to NEVER invite more people than you can afford to host or accommodate at your venue. Many guests that you assume will never come may surprise you. They may decide that this is the perfect excuse to take that family vacation to see all the family that is being gathered in one place at one time. If you know for a fact that your venue cannot fit those additional bodies, your answer has already been made for you.

JCbride2015 · January 2014

You may also tell him that, counterintuitively, some distant relatives may actually be offended to receive an invitation if you really haven't ever met them/ seen them in years. It can look gift-grabby, even though obviously that's not your intent.

Example: Fi's mom's cousin (his second cousin I guess) is having a sweet 16 for her daughter this weekend. I've been with Fi for 11 years and never met those people. Fi has seen them maybe once in the last ten years. But they included us on his mom's invitation (yeah, that was wrong too but not the point here). I was actually quite offended to be invited, because it seems like an obvious grab for a gift for this teenage girl I've never met. Fi's family gives cash for pretty much every event, so it seems to me they are just inviting people they barely know in hopes of getting more cash. Even if that's not really what they INTENDED, this invite rubbed me the wrong way. So maybe tell that to your Fi and he'll reconsider.

doeydo · January 2014

He should invite the people he truly wants to come, not everyone that shares even a little bit of his genes that he never sees.

hikebikebemerry · January 2014

My FI was the OPPOSITE! He took the mentality of, "I haven't spoken to them in a solid 2 weeks. We clearly aren't THAT close." ... really?

KytchynWitche · January 2014

FI and I have also done a lot of back-and-forth over the guest list. We're going to sit down this Sunday and really take a serious look at it again. We're at around 50 people at the moment, which we can afford, and our venue can comfortably fit, but I feel like there's some people on the list who really shouldn't be, and some people who aren't but should.

Our first and only real fight has been over the fact that I actually just want to get married at Home Affairs (SA equivalent of a courthouse wedding) and have lunch with our parents afterwards. He feels he can't do that because his family, specifically his mom, would be upset. Obviously I don't want FI or FMIL to be upset about our wedding, so now I'm just trying to make the whole thing as small and simple and as close to the "courthouse" experience as possible.

jenna8984 · January 2014

hikebikebemerry said:

My FI was the OPPOSITE! He took the mentality of, "I haven't spoken to them in a solid 2 weeks. We clearly aren't THAT close." ... really?

omg same with my FI! He's like well I haven't seen that aunt in a year...his mother is like she babysat you every day for 13 years! haha

Jstump2 · January 2014

We had somewhat of a fight about this as well. My parents are helping pay for the wedding and me and my FI are paying for the rest but he doesn't see anything wrong with his parents inviting all their friends/coworkers/neighbors. My parents aren't inviting anyone except for family! But Fi insists that he wants his parents to be able to invite who they want despite not being able to help cover costs for the extra guests.I'm just frustrated!

melbelleup · January 2014

Oh guest lists.... they're are always the first battle of planning. My family is huge, my FI's is small, he compensated by adding every single person he's ever reenacted with... really. Oh, and all his old co-workers must be invited. I can't argue though, because the people his dad would of added are some of the reenacters and his mom only wanted 10 people invited. His count is still below my list...Good thing my venue holds 290 people. We're at 272.

MrsMack10612 · January 2014

We didn't battle about this at all.

We made a list of all the people we thought we'd want to invite. Then we each took a copy of the list and ranked everybody A (Must have), B (Love to have), C (Nice to have). From there, we compared our lists together. Anybody we matched on, no discussion involved. If there was a discrepency, we talked it out.

This was also fairly easy since we've been together for so long most of the friends on the list were "ours" vs. being "his or hers". He also has a small family that he's not close to, so except for his parents and grandmother, no other family of his was invited.

It worked out that we were able to have all our A & B folks invited.

Please note - we DID NOT B-List anyone, this was simply a way to rank importance so that we each got the most important folks invited.

Belthil · January 2014

Luckily H and I didn't fight over this but I do have a story about inviting everyone and their mother to your wedding. When my cousin got married a couple of years ago her MIL had the mentality that you invited everyone to the wedding so that's what my cousin and her H did for his side. There were over 500 people that attended the wedding and clearly there were more people that had been invited but had declined.

A couple of days before the wedding my parents and their neighbours were talking and my parents mentioned that my cousin was getting married on x day. The neighbour replied that must have been a popular day to get married on because they got an invitation for a wedding on the same day but how it was really odd because it was for a kid that had babysat for them almost 10 prior and they hadn't heard anything from the family since. They mentioned that they found it very awkward, gift grabby and were more insulted than honoured that this family had thought about them. Turned out my it was the same wedding - my cousin's H used to babysit for them.

My parent's neighbours were very embarrassed that they had mentioned to the bride's family but my parents laughed it off because they agreed it was a horrible mentality to have.

Moral of the story: Don't invite people you aren't close to simply because you A) want them to feel honoured and included or

want them to give gifts. People know if they're not close to you that they're being invited to bring a gift or fill a seat.

abbyj700 · January 2014

It really amazes me that that many people will over invite for gift purposes. I don't know about you - but our per person $ is enough that I could use one less gift rather than pay the plate cost!

lyndausvi · January 2014

We were lucky and didn't have guest list issues. My parents paid for most of the wedding. I'm not sure DH even saw my parent's list. He honestly didn't care that he didn't know half the list. I knew everyone on their list even if I had not seen them in recent years. Reason he didn't know most of the list was we were engaged quickly and lived in the islands. We just were not around for him to met my extended family yet.

MIL gave us her list and my parents said "is that all? Are you sure?". I, like DH, didn't know most of the people on that list, but again didn't care. We moved away from family so it's stands to reason I would not meet them yet, but that didn't mean they were not important to DH and/or MIL.

There was one person DH put on the list last minute. I didn't know nor had heard of him and was kind-of like "why are we adding this guy?". Wasn't worth the battle, so he got invited. RSVP'd yes, then no-showed. GRRRRRR.

first planning fight!

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