Invites out of obligation vs actually wanting them in attendance

Before when we were having a big wedding, it was only going to be close family (I have a big family) and close friend to us. I don't see why I have to invited my moms church friend she only sees on Sunday or the friend that I/she talks to every 3 month.

We knew from the get go that we would not invite people:

1) We haven't seen in a year (because we got engaged on jan 30, 2021 so we are not willing to add people that will only try to meet us in order to get a STD but are not really in our lives but only want to enjoy a free meal, a free party.

2) Family members, family friends my fiancé has never met and his family members, his family friends I've not met.

3) Those who will be under 18 on 04-29-23, our wedding day with 2 exceptions: me bro who wilm be 16 and fiancé's golddaughter who will be 14. It's not a big deal since we're nixing kids, including toddlers,infants because they can cry,scream, make scenes and ruin our day but these 2 are old enough to know how to behave properly in public.

4) Co-workers because neither of us has any relationship with them outside de the office and we've never met each other's coworkers.

We are not inviting anyone out of "obligation", people our parents are submitting if we don't want them.

"parents can host guests in their home at another time or start a tradition of a family reunion picnic that you are not responsible for financing. " I love this and we both used a simimar phrase more than once, we even had to be rude a couple of times to shut their mouth for good!

Paying for everything is the 1st decision we made because my future mother- IL and one of my aunts "gifted" their daughter and now son-IL with money but, of course, invited people that either the bride nor the groom knew, they got a (very huge) say on the dinner menu,number of courses and even decided who would be on formal photos besides the couple,immediate families, grandparents and wedding party. Specifically, they added sibling's Sos (some of these relationships didn't last) and aunts,uncles that the couples didn't want in them!

However, we're inviting some uncles,aunts,great aunts,great uncles, cou sins and 2nd cousins we're not close to and we don't talk to... under 2 conditions: if we see them on the regular and they met my fiancé or me before we got engaged.

Our guest list is not final yet but we know it'll be 80-90, no more. Had we let parents add names, it would have been 250 with a majority consisting of people we don't care about.

Oh man my parents and his parents did not help with the wedding cost and i was ok with that but they wanted to invite so many people~ i let them invite like 80 people. i felt like that was a lot of friggin people considering i didn't even have 80 on my OWN guest list.

it's a tradition in my culture to let your parents have their own guests. i think the mindset is that they want to share the moment, etc.

i did have some regret because that was more to coordinate and quite frankly... i didn't really care for most of those people because i didn't even know them, ya know? and it ballooned my guest list to a really large amount and so i was kinda like darn i have even less time to spend with people in general. but in the end it worked out.

We had both sets of parents offer to help pay, and FH decided he would rather us pay for it all on our own, so we declined. His parents said "okay, but it's still here if you want it" and my dad insisted that he help. So, before we even accepted any money from them I had to tell them straight up that if they're insisting when we declined then they don't get to have any strings attached. It's not fair for them to get special privilege for contributing when FH's family was happy to help but didn't insist. My mom tried once to pull the "We're helping pay so I want there to be people there that I know," thing and I immediately shut that down. She has at least talked to well over half of our guest list so I am not concerned about her not knowing anyone.

Since neither of us have a ton of friends anyway, most of our guest list is family or family friends, so I don't feel bad telling parents that more friends can't come. Family friends we invite are pretty much limited to people that have met both of us or in very few cases they're just people who have been very influential in our lives that we just haven't seen consistently in years. My family isn't close at all, so a lot of those are obligation, but there's no nice way to invite like all of the aunts and uncles except one, or every parents' siblings except my dad's (we REALLY never see them and I don't care if they show up or not.)

Edit: "It’s not like your wedding is ... the only party you will host as a couple." This may be true for some couples, but this isn't true for us. 100% this will be the only party we host for most of these people invited. Because of that I guess that's why I don't mind the "obligation" family invites that much.

Oh wow, yeah no. You don't ask guests to fund the wedding. At that point your cousin wasn't even hosting it, the guests were. That's terribly rude on their part.