Weddingbee boards

There are some family members that I didn't originally invite to the wedding because of budget and space reasons. Technically, I'm not related to them by blood - its my uncle's second wife's children and grandchildren from a previous marriage - but I did spend quite a bit of time with them as a little kid. I haven't seen them in over a decade, and my cousin recently got married and didn't invite them, so I decided to cut them from the guest list.

Well, fast forward to today, and our guest list is much smaller than we expected (Invited 240, Expected 180, going to have about 140.) On the one hand, I'm incredibly relieved about this because I did not want a huge wedding, and couldn't really afford the full 180. However, I'm considering extending an invitation to some of the folks that we cut since we do have a little bit of extra capacity.

Would this be perceived as rude, at this stage in the game? My wedding is on June 26, so there's not a ton of time for them to plan. They know they weren't originally invited because my uncle and his wife are coming, and I'm sure they've talked about it. Is it worth it to send them an invite now, or will they just be offended?

I am interested to hear what others say because I am hoping to do this with some of my work friends.

Is it possible maybe that I could prepare them in advance by saying 'I would have loved to invite you but due to budget constraints...however, would you be interested in a last-minute invitation if space allows?

I made my RSVP date quite far in advance of the wedding for this very reason.

@cvbee, we did that as well....but unfortunately people did not respect our deadline =( I think they felt it was too early so they just waited to make their decision, and we didn't realize our situation until now.

I'm not dead-set on inviting more - I'm happy with 140, I think its a great number - but my mom really wants to invite more people so I'm just trying to figure out if its worth the trouble, or if we'll just hurt feelings. If we do this, we will definitely be up front and say we weren't able to invite everyone we wanted, but we're really excited now to be able to include them, and hope they can make it.