I am getting married this year in the city where my parents live, mostly because the weather is much nicer and a big part of my family lives nearby, but also because my fiance and I love traveling and love the idea of a destination wedding.
I initially told my mother that I wanted a bigger wedding with a guest list of around 140 -150 people, but as it turns out, when it came to booking our venue and vendors and after attending a wedding of around that number of guests, I changed my mind and decided that I wanted something more intimate with just our families and dear friends. Seeing how much everything costs, and considering that I am receiving ZERO financial help from my family, my fiance was very supportive of this decision. The wedding will be paid mostly by ourselves, but my fiance's family will be contributing some.
After sending our save the dates and cutting out quite a lot of people from the list (including some dear but friends of ours) I have continued to sense a certain pressure from my mom wanting us to invite certain people, specifically a couple of her friends. Don't get me wrong, my mom and I get along and she is very helpful with everything but she can be quite pushy. We come from a big Latin American family and she continues to refer to certain traditions and etiquettes that I find outdated and that I simply do not want to follow, such as letting a lot of people know that I am getting married (including people that will not be invited) in the hopes to receive a gift. I do not want to do things that make no sense to me and I do not want to play above our possibilities and potentially go over budget just to satisfy her social expectations.
Bear in mind that she will have my father, 5 sisters, 3 children, 6 nieces and nephews and a few family friendsthere. Is there any need for us to spend more money for her to invite 2-3 of her friends plus their +1s?
She is making me feel very guilty and stingy and she insists that she didn't give her friends any hope that they will be invited, but she definitely told them a lot of details about my wedding before I even told my friends and before I even booked a venue!
I have to admit that I might have come a bit strong/rude and I might have hurt her last week on a telephone call when I pointed out that she and my father are not contributing financially (another big 'tradition' being broken), but I feel like she pushed me over the limit and at the moment it just came out.
Can someone tell me if I am in the wrong here and how to handle these feelings? Or how to communicate to my mom that this is not a personal attack on her friends? She seems to be taking this quite personally and seems to be quite disappointed in me.
