Weddingbee boards

Our dang wedding isn't for another SIXTEEN MONTHS and I'm already having guest list drama!

We are having a fairly intimate wedding, around 80 people. We had a hard time cutting our guest list down to that small a number, but we made sure that everyone who will be invited to our wedding will be someone we love.

But now my mother is insisting that we invite five of her friends and their husbands/boyfriends. I barely know these women (two of them, I've never met!) and we don't want strangers at our wedding. My mother said that she'd pay for the extra 10 guests, which is nice of her, but that's not really the point.

The point is that we want all of our guests to be special to us. The point is that if we were to invite 10 extra people, we've got a whole list of friends that we'd rather have there. The point is that my mother really wants to invite these women just because she was invited to THEIR kids' weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc.

Did anyone else have to deal with their parents wanting to add to the guest list? How did you handle it?

The guest list is always an issue for most brides I'm sure!!  I went through it myself.  We wanted a small destination wedding of 70 (guestlist) but when the parents (both sides) got involved our guestlist doubled, so now its about 135!! 

We explained that we wanted a smaller wedding because we're paying for it, but then they offered to pay for those people they wanted to invite if they even end up going to our DW wedding.  They're reasoning for inviting more was because they don't want feelings to be hurt and our parents know for sure that these extra invited people won't come anyway. 

It's hard to get around the guest list, I think its the hardest part about wedding plannning!  It's something that you need to figure out if it'll work in your budget and if not put your foot down to both your parents, especially if you and your FI are paying for it yourselves!

Oh, I've been there. My mom went a little crazy with the guestlist, even going so far as to invite one of her psychotic friends who I actively dislike WITH a guest. We weren't going for the really intimate wedding so after a bit of a freakout I was finally just like whatever. I didn't want to deal with the drama and I'm just going to ignore the people I don't know/care for anyway. In your situation though that's tough. I second the small venue idea.

Hmmm, maybe I should tell my mother that the venue has an 80 person limit. Mwah-hah-hah-hah!!!!!!