We are having a destination wedding and EVERYONE is traveling for it. Most of these people we do not see even 1-2 a year, but we do live close to both sides of my family and see them very very very often! Like multiple times in a month.
So my father's side of the family have been complaining they aren't invited to the rehearsal dinner. None of them are actually a part of the wedding, they are all just guests, and when I explained that inviting them meant inviting my mother's side of the family and then both sides of my fiances family, which add over 20 extra people to the rehearsal dinner. The space we choose has a cap of 50 and we are at 42 without all of these extra people. So we explained straight up that there isn't enough room. Problem solved, right?...nope!
My father than decided he wanted to take his family and my mother's family out for a 'family' dinner since they aren't invited to the rehearsal, and has already talked to and invited all of them out one night. The problem is we have very limited time with ALL of our guests that are traveling for the wedding to see us and we don't want to spend 3 hours at a dinner with people that we live close to and see the most out of anyone.
I know my future MIL is upset and hurt by this because while she only lives about 2 hours from us, we only get the chance to see her once every few months, and again we see my family multiple times in a month. It is unfair to have to explain to other people that even though we rarely see them, we are being pulled away from our time with them for this seperate dinner. My dad just doesn't understand how unreasonable his family is being by demanding they get invited to a dinner when everyone that will be at the wedding are people we rarely see and they are seen all the time.
What do we do?!