mil Inviting Too Many People... Help!!

This is what I'm doing, I'm treating both mine and his parents as guest. They dont even know the date. My mom will probably do what your fmil is doing. Your fh should be the one telling her. My fh made his mom aware of the people hes inviting and he said in a time his mother understood. She hasnt asked him she wants to invite this person and that person. He told her if anyone has a problem with his guest list, to come to him. But if you're paying for everything, she shouldnt have any say.

You make sure only 50 guests get invited by having you and FH do all the work. He makes the list for his side of the family, he gets the addresses for those on the list only, and the two of you alone send out invitations. I wouldn’t involve his mother at all.

Give her 50 invites and no more, matter of fact, I'd give her 40 and see how she does with that and then you have a buffer of 10 to play with. Good luck that just doesnt seem fair. This was my husband's 2nd wedding so he didnt give his mom the option to invite anyone, she seemed upset but that was his call.

So it seems like your date is in 2020. You could ask her for names and addresses of relatives for holiday cards and then use the list for guests. Pretend like you suddenly want to get in the tradition of sending cards as a couple.
Then don't let her invite anyone.

You should sit down with her and FH and write out just names of who she wants to invite. Start with a numbered list and close family first. When you get to 50 stop. If she has more to add tell her then the list needs to be cut. If you can make a compromise (with venue space permitting) you can add that she pays for anyone over the 50 mark. Leave her with the list of 50 so she can get your the addresses. It is not fair to you and FH to be expected to pay for additional guests that were not agreed upon.

Since you are paying for the wedding on your own, you don't let the parents decide who's invited. You and your fiance write the list together based off who you want to invite.

Why don't you and your FH just do the guest list yourselves instead of relying on her to do it? She's already shown you that she's not capable of respecting space and budget constraints.

Your fiance needs to tell her the limit, before she gets contact information. If she asks someone for their address and they end up not invited, it's rude. I'd just tell her what you guys allotted for his family, and the cost per person if she wants to add more. You should be the only one sending out invites.

Tell her a drop dead number for people that she can invite & ask her to send you & FH the list. You & FH makes sure that the number only reflects 50, if there’s more than 50 talk to ur FH first to see if there is anyone that he definitely want there, after his input go back to ur FMIL & tell her that she needs to make cuts as you are only sending out 50 invites.

If you are the one sending out the invitations, then she cannot invite more people than you say because YOU are in charge of the invitations. If you are paying for everything yourself I would say you have to be strong and stick to your guns. I would not give her invitations to send out, I would have her give you the information and you send them out. As for telling her, I would personally approach this subject sooner rather than later as it might take some time to blow over (as I speak from personal experience...). I would also have your FH weigh in, as my future MIL tried to invite cousins and family friends that my FH feels NO connection to/hasn't met/hasn't seen in 15 years. Just remember this wedding is about YOU and as long as you keep control of it, and you don't give her control over the invitations, she can't really do anything about the guest list.

I agree with PPs here that you shouldn't allow FMIL to dictate who is invited to your wedding, especially since you are paying for it yourselves. That said, I think FH should be the one to tell his mother that his side of the list is capped at 50.

As for getting contact info for those 50, couldn't you get some of it from FHs brother? Probably a lot of the same family members that were at brother's wedding would be invited to yours. This way, you can bypass FMIL altogether. If you can't get all of the addresses this way, I would have FH reach out to those family members for their addresses. The less involved FMIL is, the less chance that she can invite anyone.

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Good idea! I didn't think of asking his brother!

Tell her 40

View Quoted Comment That's how I collected addresses!

I would go with the idea of giving her 40 it seems like she will most definitely do more than the 40 anyways then the number she comes up with, have your fiancé tell her she needs to cut it to 50 max. I would have him handle this.

I’m dealing with the fallout of this situation now. My FMIL was responsible for getting addresses for me from family members. I gave her the list of family members FH wanted invited. We calculated we would need a total of 74 invitations between my family, his family and friends. I ordered 90, just incase, because I was feeling paranoid, and it’s a good thing I did. FMIL sent out fb messages to family members not on the list she was given saying “Nicholas is getting married in October and would like to invite you, what’s your address?” So now out of 90 invitations, I have 1 left over!!! Do yourself a favor and put your FH in charge of his guest list and have him get the addresses you need. You already know she’s going to invite too many people as she has before. Learn from your BIL and my mistakes. Do not put FMIL in charge of invitating anyone!

Congratulations Erin on your upcoming wedding. Now I agree with the majority you and your FH must stand united and firm on the 50 cap invites since you are paying allow him to talk and tell her it's only 50 including her. prior to this conversation I would reach out to your BIL and get the list of guest that they invited. because when your FH has the converstaion he can also say we got the list with addresses from xxxxx (BIL) so I will go through list and send to the selected 50. Thank her for her help and support and be take back control of the situation.