Disagreement on how many to send . . .

[CourtneyV]

Quote:

Originally Posted by luvtoteachlaw The reason I am trying to sort this out is because the people that I really am not keen on inviviting ARE dramatic and over the top. Long story short . . . I was engaged once before (8 years ago) and called off the wedding (best decision I ever made, but I digress . . .) but these family members had a coronary when I made the decision to have no children at the wedding (it was a 4 pm wedding with a late reception, after all). There was sooo much blaming and guilt-tripping and passive-aggressive behavior . . . they went so far as to tell me "Well, I guess we can't come if you don't allow us to bring our kids" and "I guess I will stay home and watch all the kids and everyone else can go to the wedding". Ugh. I guess I could use that as a reason why I didn't invite them this time! Afterall, if people are so ridiculous as to refuse to hire a sitter for their kids so they can attend a wedding, they aren't gonna board a plane without them, either.

You definately don't need that drama at your wedding. If you don't want them there, don't invite them! It should only be the people that you truely want to be there, and you definately should NOT feel obligated to invite anyone if you don't wish to. My point above was that people will kick up a fuss no matter what, even if they have no intention of going - just be prepared for that response!

[Pisces]

I agree. You need to invite the people who you want there and who are close to you both. Just because FI's list happens to be more family than yours, doesn't mean you need to match your family list.

 

Before I found BDW and was unfamiliar with the STD idea, we decided to send out engagement announcements because we knew people would start asking, and we didn't want to have to explain. On the announcements we simply put that we would be getting married in Maui in Dec '08 with parents and siblings.

 

Since then we have decided to invite a couple of other people, but the idea got across and we only have people coming who we want there.

 

I kind of always assumed you sent out STD's to the same people who got invites.

[beachbride08]

I sent an engagement announcement, STD and invite to all the people that we wanted to invite to the wedding. I have a larger family than FI and most of his family is in Italy. We knew they do not have the money to come so we did not send invitations to them, but his mom sent an invitation to the family just so they could see it. I did send STD and invitations to my extended family, but not all of them. There are some cousins on my mom's side (she passed away when I was 10 and I am her only child) that I have kept in contact with via email and Christmas cards, etc. that I wanted to invite, but there are a lot I have not spoken to in years and don't have addresses for. Those were the people that were not invited. I felt bad considering some of them are siblings to ones I did invite, but we had to draw the line somewhere. I didn't put an RSVP with the STD which looking back I wish I would have so I would have had an idea if any of the extended family were planning on coming. I never heard anything from any of them. I sent out our invites kind of early with a RSVP deadline of August 15 so that still gave me enough time to finalize plans with an accurate guest count. We are now receiving RSVPs from the extended family and so far none are coming. The same guest list will also be used for our shower that my aunt and cousin are throwing for us locally, and I have a feeling we will have more attending that. Now that I have rambled my advice to you is don't invite people you don't want there and don't worry about balancing the sides. I would recommend sending out STDs and Invitations to all, and something that may be helpful is putting an RSVp with the STDs even if it just a tentative one. We didn't, and we didn't hear anything from the extended guests until we sent out the invitations 2 weeks ago and have started to receive the reply cards.