mil won’t give her guest list

I would tell her you need the list by a certain date and if she does not provide the list then she is getting a set number, for example if you do not provide your list by Tuesday you will only be receiving 20 invitations for your guests as we need to book the venue.

Agree with PP. Give her a deadline and, if you want to be nice, a set number of guests that she can invite if she doesn’t meet that deadline. I personally wouldn’t give her any invitations. If it was important to her that those people attend, she would give you the list.

Truthfully I don’t totally understand the concept of fmil’s guestlist. We had 1 guestlist that we put together. Of course we talked with my MIL to see if we were missing anyone or if anyone could be taken *off* the list (“do we really need to invite this uncle we haven’t spoken to in 6 years? [we don’t care but he’s your brother in law so we will if it’s important to you]”) kind of conversations , but she wasn’t given free reign or her own list....that might be the start of your issue. Id
change your approach. Either try to create a list together with her, or simply allocate her a number of guests she can invite of her choosing. Is “her” list supposed to be just her friends or is it her whole side of the family? In that case, I would have your future spouse put together the list of his family who he wants to have there. You could even use it as a rough draft for a conversation with mom (“who am I missing that you think we need to include”)

First of all YOU and your FH decide the guest list, not your FMIL. You create the list and if she has others she wants to add you decide if it’s ok. Or tell her she can have X number of people and go with your list. In any case I would give her a deadline or you won’t find a venue.

My fh and I did our guest and who we were going to invite. Once we did that we added people the few people that my mom and his aunt wanted to come. therefore, you and fh make up your guest list not your mil then ask her if she would like to invite people to the wedding. If you wait on her you will not find a venue in a reasonable to time to have your wedding and then you will be stuck. Give her a deadline to add people to your guest list. Good luck,

I had the exact same problem! It honestly has made planning stressful and less enjoyable. I also couldn’t do anything about it because I had no idea what relatives other than immediate family were on fiancés side. She kept avoiding it and every time I asked it would get pushed aside. I finally had to threaten that if we didn’t get a list I was not going to plan a wedding and we could not plan anything else because we had no idea what the budget was because I had no idea what our guest list was. My fiancé finally also got very stern with her and had a serious talk with her about. Like how ridiculous that you can’t write names down on a list? She seemed to come around after me saying that nothing else would get planned and fiancé talked to her. Long story short, we finally got a list and it was more then I wanted. I told my fiancé they needed to pay for all the extra people they invited, which they have agreed to do. My best advice is that you need to get stern with her. If she brings up other wedding stuff, I would say “well I don’t know, I can’t plan anything without a guest list.” The reason why she would not write a list was because she wanted to invite more people then I wanted to give her. Good luck!

May I ask why she has a guest list? My FH and so made our own and then just went through it with our parents.

You could tell her in writing (e-mail so that you can cc him and yourself) a need this by date.

Make sure that it’s less time than you actually need. Then, if she provides it after the date that you give her, you can say that the date has passed and she’ll have to pay for those people if she want them to attend.

Congratulations and 🍀‼️

View Quoted Comment We have most of the family on our list, but there might be family friends and extended relatives we may not have thought of that she would want there. It’s mostly a courtesy, but if she won’t even produce a simple list of people she would like there then I am less inclined to allow her to help us plan anything else as she is not proving to be reliable

I agree with Marissa’s suggestion. Give her a set date and a set number of invitations if she doesn’t meet the date.

View Quoted Comment

Things like that upset me...it takes the joy away from wedding planning from the bride. It’s unnecessary stress... I’m glad you were able to address it and laid some important boundaries!

I would tell your fiance to tell her if she doesn't get the guest list to you by X date, she won't have any say in the guest list.