AHR...who to invite?

Lara · September 6, 2009

So, our DW is planned for May, 2010. We've just sent out our official STD cards and on those the information about our AHR is included. Now, the problem is that my family members have gone ahead and invited their own friends to come to Jamaica with us (my little brothers both invited friends and my FMIL did the same). I am totally fine with those additional people coming on the trip with us (the more the merrier, and besides the more people that book through our TA/group carrier, the more perks we get) however now I'm torn as to what to do about the AHR. We've budgeted for our own list of 150 people, but now that there are more people coming to Jamaica, we have to invite them to our AHR, right? I think it would be rude to celebrate with certain people in Jamaica but not extend an invitation to the AHR to them, right? But we weren't the ones who invited them in the first place! HELP!

Side note: My FMIL insisted that my FI add about 20 people to our invite list, but so far they have not offered to help us out financially. My father has already contributed a lot of money to our wedding, and my mother is doing almost all of the baking for our AHR and yet neither of them has requested for us to add any of "their people" to the list. I just think this isn't fair at all...does anyone agree?

hollym · September 24, 2009

Hmmm, that's tough. I never thought of that. So far, none of the people I invited are bringing guests. (Well, my sister might bring a friend but that's only one person!) Personally, I think that if you allow guests to come to Jamaica, they should be "invited" to the AHR. I put invited in quotes because technically they're someone's guest and whether or not that person decides to ask them to be their guest to the AHR is up to that person.

Also, it's kind of hard to control. How would you tell those people they aren't invited? That might get kind of messy. I say don't send them a separate invite to the AHR but if the person legitimately invited happens to bring someone, so be it. Those people might offset the number of people invited who won't be able to make it.

As far as his mom insisting on inviting people.....Ouch. Usually that only happens when they're paying for half the wedding. If these people aren't important to your fiance, I would think of a nice way to tell his mom that the wedding costs a lot of money and you can't afford to extend the guest list. That's at least 20 more people that your mom has to bake for!!!

These are just my opinions...I hope everything works out for you!

zethers · September 24, 2009

Here's what I did...because we knew most people wouldn't make it to the DW we invited all of our friends and family, over 100 invitations went out. Then when it came to the AHR, we clearly couldn't invite all those people, backyard AHR and we figured we could have 150 people tops. We eliminated quite a few people depending on who responding to the RSVP!! Haha, we figured if they didn't have the decency to respond even after I included a pre-paid postage envelope, filled out the address and everything and they couldn't even respond and/or call us, then we didn't feel bad about not inviting them to the AHR.

This way you can eliminate some people from the AHR list while including those that are making the trip to be there. Just a suggestion, it worked for us.