I offered to throw a bridal shower for a friend, and already I'm regretting it. Nothing major has happened yet, but lot's of little things with the bride and her mother are making me worried about what will happen as the shower gets closer (it's set for the beginning of June).
First, the date that worked best for me got vetoed because it didn't work for a friend of the bride's mother. Fine, just because it was the best date, didn't mean it was the only date. No big deal.
Then, they started trying to get me to move the shower to another friend's house or a rent a room at the town hall because they could invite more people. I was hesitant , because 1.) throwing a decent shower is a lot of work and hard enough in my own home. I don't want to add in transferring all of my stuff to another location and then cleaning up someone else's kitchen after cooking in it all day. and 2.) I can't afford to host any more people, anyway.
Now, they want to add people to the guest list who aren't invited to the wedding and put a line on these people's invitations that says "No gifts." The reasoning is that they can't accommodate everyone at the wedding, but know these people would want to celebrate with them anyway.
I've officially vetoed the alternate location and tried to suggest that inviting people to the shower who aren't invited to the wedding is unkind, but what are my responsibilities if they continue to push it? These people are very close friends of my family (the bride was my best friend growing up, our parents, aunts and uncles are friends, our grandparents were friends; we sometimes spend holidays together), and pushing back too hard could turn very uncomfortable for me. At the same time, I don't want to be rude by inviting people not invited to the wedding, and I definitely don't want to be pushed into hosting a party I can't really afford or is more than I planned on doing. Any advice for containing this before the situation gets out of hand?