Am I missing something? Why do you let parents invite guests?

Honestly, I have no idea why people let them. Just because the parents may contribute to the wedding does not give them a right to take over the wedding. At least in my mind anyway.

I'm planning my wedding now and my future MIL has requested that we invite her two friends, whom we've never meet. She even said she would pay for their meals, um like no. Just because you offer that doesn't mean anything to me. It's mine and my partners wedding.

There are lots of difficult parents out there and in those cases, it’s hard to get why one would be ok with, even want, friends of their parents to attend.

However, plenty of people don’t have antagonistic relationships with their parents and don’t see it as a negative that their parents want to share their excitement with friends. These are usually people the bride or groom knows somewhat, and probably have been family friends for years.
Historically, these types of guests were the ones who were the big gift givers - the bride and groom, often young and unestablished, were given gifts by the older generations to get started in life. Now that couples are much older and on their own when they marry, they have much larger circles of peers who are also established. Marriage has changed in the last 50 years in many ways, as well as the associated social customs, but there is always some overlap in times of change.
With a slight twist, when I got engaged, one of my daughters told me a couple of her friends she wanted to invite - she’s excited I’m getting married, I’ve known these girls for years and while they aren’t my peers, they are more than welcome to share our joy.

We are paying for the majority of our wedding. Both sets of parents wanted to help pay, but FH doesn't want to take money from our hard-working parents so he declined the contribution from his dad. I attempted to do the same to my dad and he absolutely refused to not help lol. That being said, because it was our own reasoning for his parents not helping, I'm trying to keep the amount of people both sets are allowed to be similar, even if my parents are the only ones contributing funds. The majority of our guests on both sides are relatives and older family friends so I have never felt that we needed to go out of the way to invite more of our parents friends because we already planned to invite the closest ones.

We asked both moms for people when we first made the list and most people they suggested we already had on the list and each also got some hard no's. His mom especially wanted to invite a bunch of distant relatives I've never met and he never sees, and we had to stop that quickly because we're hoping for around 150-160 people. We don't need to accommodate room for great aunt Lisa's cousin's daughter just because his mom feels like it would be nice to see her again. She was pretty upset, but she gets upset when she doesn't get her way so she's just been cut out of planning. My mom wanted to invite some closer cousins but at that point if I invited one sibling then I need to invite others because our relationships are pretty similar and I didn't want to deal with all of that.

I don't have a problem with letting my parents or his parents inviting guests. Of course we have to trim down the guest list in the end so some may get cut out, and we and our parents will have to decide who makes the cut. But a lot of these friends of my parents are people they've known for decades, people who gave my mom gifts when she had me and my siblings. I've known them as well when I was a kid, and while they aren't my own friends, I'm happy for them to be there.

My FH and I agreed right away that we wanted to pay for our wedding because we didn't want to deal with all the drama that comes with other people "hosting" our wedding. We didn't want stress over guest lists, venues, decor, nothing. We made that clear from the beginning. Our wedding is only 38 of our closest friends and immediate family and we're super excited. So far, no drama!

We're paying for ours ourselves and my FH's mom keeps "remembering" people she wants to invite. We asked both of his parents for a list of possible guests (I already knew my parents' people)and she gave us a list of people who never responded to information requests to receive our Save the Dates. Now, every two weeks or so she mentions a new person. Most recently, her best friend who I have never heard of. I asked my FH why she wasn't included in her original guest list if that's her "best friend" and he just shook his head. She's the only one giving us issues (after volunteering to pay for the cake then backing out) with not going with the flow. To my understanding, she's very controlling and manipulative and was going to do this regardless of who was paying for her favorite child's wedding smh.

My fiancé and I are paying for the entire wedding... my mother has been an ANIMAL over the guest list... it’s actually quite horrifying as she and I are close. I really thought she’s understand that our venue space is limited I didn’t expect my parents to contribute financially and don’t feel entitled to anything, but I DO expect them to be decent about everything and not argue about how I haven’t invited their BFF from the 8th grade...

First, given the opportunity, many parents including mine and and FIL choose wisely, and a very few people. For them it is like being SO to the wedding party , a courtesy to give them nice to sit with , someone they like to talk with and dance with, of generation. 3%of a 200 person wedding is not so much, especially when they have been continuously helpful throughout the wedding planning. Also, in our family, our parents entertain 16 to 32 or more people a couple times a month. And for all our years at home they allowed us to have a parallel group, usually 1-2 friends each since we were school age, and with 9kids we added to their party prep for years, never any complaint from them. How could any of us say NO to just a couple of their friends.

I think most of the time it is because they do not want to start drama with family members. Planning a wedding is stressful enough and don't want to add drama on top of that.

My fiance and I are paying for our own wedding and doing what we want.

View Quoted Comment For those of you who think it's all about the money, remember to pay your parents for all the babysitting services you'll expect when you have kids

View Quoted Comment THIS !! I couldn't agree more.
Most people on here don't understand that the level (or lack) of closeness is the most important reason why some couples are not planning to invite randoms while most of them are fine with the idea of inviting some of their parents' friends if they are not close to them but they know them.

View Quoted Comment Not a single person here has said they wouldn’t allow close family friends? The problem is entitled parents thinking they can invite 30+ people their child has only met ONCE, if ever, or that haven’t been around in decades. Children should be their parents most prized possession. They should want their wedding to turn out to be exactly what the bride/groom dreamed of, spent with the people that matter to THEM. Not sure what’s spoiled or selfish about a bride wanting that.

I'd like to know why some parents are treated differently from other parents. My S.O. and I are no longer together. We paid 100% for our wedding. My former in-laws were so pushy and demanding regarding our wedding that I swore I'd never treat another person like that. I paid about 25% of my kids' wedding. Ithought that all the parents would help. None of the three other parents chipped in a dime - nothing. I gave the couple the money and told them to have the wedding that they wanted. Meanwhile, one of the Moms' bought a dress in the same color the bridesmaids are wearing and that individual invited Aunts, uncles, cousins, family friends, etc. It never occurred to me that I needed to say "One string, treat me fairly." They invited everyone in my S.O.'s family and huge, huge numbers of people from the fiances' family. They invited three of my four siblings and none of my neices, or nephews. My siblings think I told them not to invite the one sibling that was excluded when I asked them three times to at least include all my siblings. Now, none of my siblings are coming and two of them are not speaking to me. If they had wanted a small, intimate wedding, that would have been fine, but this is a large wedding. If all the parents had been allotted the same number of invitations I would be okay with it. But my family was just cut out. Because of the huge disparity in family invitations, I feel like I'm barely welcome.