When my fiance and I were planning our wedding, my mother gave us a lengthy list of people she wanted to invite to the wedding, including the names of almost everyone in her office. Her coworkers are not people that she socializes with outside of work. My fiance and I were dismayed by the list because it meant cutting friends from our list, but because my parents had given us a sizeable cash gift as a wedding present in lieu of paying for the wedding, and we put that gift toward hosting our wedding ourselves, we felt obligated to go along with it.
Now I've received RSVP cards from two of these coworkers. One, who was invited by herself because she is not married or in a relationship, wrote in "and guest" on the response line. She was not invited with a guest. The other, who was invited by name along with her husband, has decided to bring someone other than her husband and wrote this person's name on the response card next to her own. I've asked my mother to tell these people that they cannot bring uninvited guests or substitute guests, but she won't do it because she thinks the conversations will be awkward. I'm putting my foot down on this because we're already aggravated to be inviting people who are strangers to us to our wedding at the expense of inviting our friends, and I think allowing these people to add their own guests is ludicrous. Am I wrong? I can't contact these people any other way than by mail, because the only contact info I have for them is the mailing addresses my mother gave me. My mother doesn't have their phone numbers or email addresses, which is an indication of how close she is to these people. Besides, I think since she wanted them invited, she should explain that wedding invites are non-transferable. What do I do?