Weddingbee boards

Ok so here is the situation... it is two months before the wedding since we really started planning a year ago the guest list sort of ballooned. Both sets of parents agreed upon giving $5,000 toward the wedding and then we would make up the rest. So at the time that was awesome and I knew we would for sure make the budget. 70 people later, it isn't possible.

I keep looking at the budget trying to see where I can make cuts but I've done everything in a very budget friendly way... picked the cheapest dinner options, DIY invites and all other stationary, photographer is cheap, got a great deal on the limo... so we've come to the conclusion that at this point there really isn't anything that we can cut.

So here is the problem.. we need to ask my fiance's parents for more money, because his mom is the one that ballooned the guest list. I feel bad that we can't afford ourselves to make up for all of the extra people, but we are just graduating college and are in the process of buying a house as well so we just simply can't afford it. I've been going back and forth on if it is right to ask or not, but I think that it is understandable... we never wanted a huge wedding ourselves and had no intention of making it that way, I don't think it is my fault at all that she chose to over invite. I've been struggling to work with the growing amount of people and fit it into the budget but I mean two months before the wedding I'm just like ok this is as much as I can do, you know what I mean?

So how do I go about doing this? I just don't know like how to actually ask her out loud.

I probably should also mention that I really don't want to have to ask my parents to contribute any more than they already have because his parents make way more money than mine do and my dad also got laid off like three different times in the past year, so I know that they are already struggling to give us any money at all.

I suggest that you and your FI (it's very, very important that he do all the talking here) sit down with his parents and let them know that the wedding is going to cost more than originally anticipated because the guest list on that side has ballooned. I assume that cutting people isn't an option, so let them know exactly how much you're short and that you hate to ask, but you need their help to get this done. Let it evolve from there. 

Okay, yeah I think it is a good idea if I am present during it though because I know exactly where all of the money is going to and such. It just sucks because like you can only do so many things in a budget friendly way, but if the guest list is too big then no matter what you do it doesn't really seem to help.

Yeah I wish I could have told her not to invite them but it was kind of like they just kept gradually being added (behind my back by the way - she had my account info for theknot.com because she told me she would just input the addresses on there for me to make it easier). Anyway so she did that and then months later when I went to get the names & addresses for the invites I noticed that she had added all of those people and had failed to tell me about it. So I've been budgeting this whole time on a guest count that was long gone, I just hadn't realized it yet. I didn't even know how to handle that situation because I did say umm you invited a ton of people and she was like 'well honey we have a huge family, nothing can be done about that'. She is quite the jerk.

So your invites have gone out?

Yeah all the invites went out. We were banking on maybe like twenty people not coming because that would have been pretty much taking everything we have but still doable, but since getting back RSVPs we have almost all of them back and only like 4 people declined! So that idea didn't work out so well lol

lol I called her a jerk given not that one instance, our whole history together - very complicated and crappy.