The Never Ending Guestlist

Initially, FI and I wanted a DW with a guestlist of 100- with 50 from each of us. We know not everyone will attend but this was an ideal number. We based our package on about 50 guests.

I worked hard to keep my numbers to 50 and was doing very well. FI's mom wanted to add 50+ to the list FI already created with 40 ppl( his list included family and friends). Which would make it a total of 90 from his side. We decided to only add 25 which brings the total guest list to 140( I decided to make some additions to my own list)

Most of the Std's were sent out and I thought I didn't have to worry about the list. Well now FMIL wants us to send invites to 20 more people ( from her initial list). She doesn't understand that it's just too much. To me it doesn't make sense to invite everyone to our DW. I feel if we invite 160ppl we might as well have had it at home.

Not sure what to do... FI and I have already decided that we don't want to increase the list but how many ways can we say No?? Any ideas on how to handle this?

What a nightmare...we went through the same thing and wound up just saying to hell with it and invited right around 160. Luckily only about 50 people are actually coming but everyone got an invite and FMIL got her way.

Alls well that ends well, there is too much to think about to stress about everything.

We just told my FMIL No. We are paying for the whole wedding on our own. Its OUR day not hers. We told her we wanted a very small wedding and that was that. She was trying to invite people who I had never even met and most likely won't. They were "her friends" nothing to do with us. And that was just odd to me to have people at my small wedding that I had never met and my FI said he had only met some of them a few times. We told her if she want all the people to to host a party when we get back and she can do whatever and invite whoever she wants.

<sigh> welcome to my world....we also started out with a small guest list, and it quickly got out of control due to FMIL. However I truly believe that the majority of them won't be able to make it (fingers crossed). However it's still a lot of additional cost for us to have to print over 100 invites, when I had only planned on needing to send about 12 to 20! I'm seriously thinking about sending the nice invites I really like to my "a" list and then buying less expensive invites for the people on my "b" list, that I really don't think are going to come anyway. Why should I spend close to $10 per invitation (not even including postage) for people I barely even know? Is that terrible of me?

It's just unfair how people think they can just force these types of things on you when it is YOUR wedding.

OMG i went through this with my own mom. I originally wanted like 50 people total and somehow it grew to over 200 invited. I was (and still am) kind of upset by it but in the end since she was paying I conceded. I don't think that's what you should do though! I know my mom felt like the people "would not come" and she just wanted them to know they were important to us.

I know this doesnt really help you, except for the fact that I can totally relate. Let us know how you end up handeling it, but I would let FI take care of it since it's his mom.

good luck!

Thanks for the advice. I love this forum. I feel a little better knowing that I'm not alone dealing with the whole guestlist issue.

We invited 140 and we are going to have 70 - so you are probably safe with planning for 50% for a DW. BUT, we are also paying for the whole thing, so when my Dad asked to invite his cousins, I said, "well, then we will have to invite mom's cousins and my FI's parents cousins and we really hadn't planned on adding that many additional people". My Dad forgot that whatever he added, we had to do the same for my FI's side - that may help you FIML understand.