This is mostly a vent, but suggestions would be awesome as well. So my FI and I are keeping our wedding pretty small, mostly because we are paying for it ourselves, and can't afford a huge affair. I am extremely close to my family, including cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. So I am inviting my family and a few close friends. He is not quite as close with his family, and is inviting only immediate family and close friends. He hasn't even seen some of his aunts and uncles in years, which was a part of the reason behind that decision when we realized that we needed to keep things small.
When speaking with each of our immediate families about our desire to keep it small, my mom said she was fine with that at first. His parents were also fine with it, although his grandparents were really upset that we weren't inviting more of his family. They actually made quite a big deal out of it, and it involved multiple conversations with them about how we were not including many people who we are close to, including some of our very good friends who we spend significant amounts of time with.
His grandparents now seem to be on the same page. However, my mom has gone off the deep end. Every time I speak with her (wedding related or not), she throws in the name of some new person who she wants to invite. I know that she's excited, but she now has decided that she would like to invite a few family friends, her next door neighbors, a current co-worker, and a past co-worker of hers, and every kid in our family (we decided we are not having any kids). Each time she gives me a new name of potential invite, I remind her that we are keeping the guest list small, not inviting some people who are close to us, etc. After the first few times, she started the conversation with, "I know you're keeping the guest list small, but the parents are entitled to invite some people too". So I kept reminding her about FI's family, and how most of them aren't even invited.
Now she's offering to pay for the people who she wants to have there. My problem with this is that we know that FI's family would never to be able to afford to contribute to include people on their side who we are not currently inviting. We in no way expect them to contribute anything - we have had many conversations about not relying on anyone but ourselves for any of this. However, I think that her paying for and inviting so many of her own people will only cause more drama with my FILs than I care to deal with. Trying to explain to his grandparents that we have people that the two of us don't even know at the wedding, but his aunts and uncles weren't invited (with or without talking about who paid for what) is not a conversation that I want to have. So I respectfully declined her money and told her that we are keeping our wedding to what (and who) we can afford on our own. Now she's angry and not speaking to me.
I'm sure others have had situations arise like this. What did you do?