So my best friend/bridesmaid asked me to send her a guest list for the bridal shower, this is harder than I thought! Although I'm certainly grateful she's planning it!
First, this made me realize I don't have many female friends, oops. With all of my closest female friends and family there I listed a total of 18 people including myself. I've heard small showers are better, but man is that too small?
Second, I have a LARGE family but I'm not very close to many of them. My mom is a drama queen and has issues with my dad's side of the family (they're divorced and I'm not as close to his side but we're friendly), I wouldn't mind inviting a few of them but when mentioning this to my mom she grumbled and made some reaction as if I was joking with her or doing this to spite her. They've never done anything wrong to her, it's more of a guilty by association thing, she thinks they're a horrible family that doesn't care about me or my brother, but we've just never been close, nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure how many of them to invite anyway, only the cousins? My grandma? Aunts too? I don't know if the aunts would get insulted if I only invite the cousins or grandma or whatever. I find it annoying that I always have to ask my mother how she feels about a person or decision, because she's not adult enough to deal with it, but I don't want drama out of this. So I risk either making my mother uncomfortable or alienating my dad's family that is already kinda alienated.
Third my older brother recently got engaged (Yay!) his fiance is really nice but we've never hung out or talked much. I wonder whether to invite her since we'll be SIL's soon, she won't know anyone at the party so eh...
Then there's the thought that this is a gift giving party, so it's difficult to evaluate my relationship with which people and whether I feel comfortable asking them to gift me things. How did you guys decide your list? Was it every female guest? Was it hierarchical? Should I just keep it as the small list without my dad's family?
Thanks!
Edit: FI's family is not in the country so they're sadly not in the picture.