Hello again, WW community!
My fiancé and I are planning a semi-destination wedding in Chicago in 2022 (overseas destination for FH's guests, not for mine). How did you decide which family members to invite and which not to? Or did you simply invite the whole family? We originally thought that it would probably be just his dad and brother willing to make the trip to Chicago, with maybe a random uncle or two. But after announcing our engagement, about 20+ people have jumped on the bandwagon of planning a family trip to Chicago for our wedding. We're trying to keep the guest list at the minimum required for F&B spend, which puts us at around 80ish guests. If we invite his entire family (and they all end up going), I'd have to remove people from my side of the list, which I'd rather not do because the whole point of planning the wedding in Chicago was (1) easier bureaucracy lol and (2) because I haven't seen most of these close friends or family in about five years, and I wanted to make a point of celebrating this momentous occasion with them because I never see them.
We're also planning a second reception/celebration in his hometown because we expected most of his family would be staying in Spain (mostly for his grandparents and huge group of friends, and for my network of friends here who I'm not inviting to Chicago). I won't be inviting anyone from the US to the Spain celebration except for my parents and sister, so if all of his family were to come to Chicago, it would be at the expense of including more of my side of the list while his family attends two celebrations.
FH has also clearly stated that he doesn't want to invite his entire family to Chicago for pretty much the same reasons I don't want to. But neither of us is sure how to go about only inviting certain members of the family. They all live in the same town, and the majority in the same apartment building his grandfather built back in the day. There's no way to tactfully/subtly invite only some of them (not that we'd try to keep it a secret--just that it would be very immediately obvious who made the cut and who didn't).
I know that it's my fiancé's responsibility to take care of his half of the guest list, but we're both struggling with how to approach it. Half of them have already started looking into hotels and activities in Chicago. Do we just suck it up and invite them all? Is there a tactful way to explain that we can't afford to invite everyone? In your experience, how did people take the news that they weren't invited? Help!
