Mother-in-law Wants to Invite Her Friends To The Wedding

My parents have a huge family friend guest list that they want us to invite. Since they are helping with the majority of our wedding cost, I don't have much room to argue. My only issue is I don't know half of them and I wanted our wedding to be intimate, since I'm shy and not the best at being the center of attention. I would set the maximum for your guest list with everyone you and your fiancé want to invite, and then let her know from there how many she can invite.

I asked my parents, grandparents and his parents if they wanted an specific people there. My FHs parents said they wanted on friend there and that was it. My parents and my grandparents are helping pay so they invited a few people I really didn't want there but again they are helping pay so I have to give them some input. Typically if they are helping pay they get some kind of say and if they aren't helping then they don't get a say. If it was me I would ask weather they are helping pay or not but I would tell them something like " We have x amount of room left in the budget (or space left at the venue) if you would like to invite someone." this way you are extending the option but also giving them a limit.

We didn't give anyone a number, and pretty much just asked who they wanted to invite. None of my husband's father's friends came (we invited around 7 couples) but they all RSVPed no and sent a gift so it was fine, my mom had 10 or so friends, my dad had 5 or so, my husband's mother had none. My parents paid for the whole wedding so we weren't restricting the guest list.

We are trying to stay around 40 people. My fiancé and myself could invite 40 people alone so I feel I need to reserve some spots for her. I wouldn't have an issue with them inviting whoever they wanted, but we are paying for 3/4th of the wedding ourselves and don't have a huge budget to work with. Would it be terrible for me to ask her to pay for the friends she invites if she wants to invite more than 4 people?

Nope. Not terrible at all, and in fact, very reasonable. You are being very generous to FMIL's wants, especially since you want to keep your wedding small and intimate. I think that is a very reasonable compromise. If you and FH agree that she should be able to invite a few friends, give her 4 spots, and if there are more, she is welcome to come up with that cost. Because we all know that more heads = more money. But I would also put some kind of cap on it, to ensure that she doesn't go crazy. Not that I think she would, but sometimes people have different definitions, and you don't want there to be a misunderstanding. She says "a few friends" and maybe she's thinking 10 or 12, where you are thinking 4. So, just be very clear on how many she can invite.

It's reasonable that you don't want your wedding filled with people you don't know! I allowed our parents to invite a lot of people but it's definitely not something you have to do

We are getting married on the beach in Hawaii and we have to get a permit. The permit allows X ppl without a day of coordinator (who’s cost goes up with every 5 extra people) well my FMIL decided she wasn’t gonna tell us, but she invited her friend and her whole family from Texas(we were inviting the family to an event we were holding in TN& they were gonna get to stream the wedding). Well we were already over the number of ppl that were allowed (we knew a few weren’t coming but that put us at the exact number) so we told her she couldn’t do that. Her friend isn’t allowed at the wedding or the reception. The family could come but she had to ask before inviting ppl. I will also say she is paying for absolutely nothing, so since we are paying we don’t want any extra costs. So I would not feel bad about saying no or limiting her to a few friends (that’s super nice if you give her an amount of ppl to invite that are ~her~ friends)

I'm letting my parents invite whoever they want, we have wiggle room in the guest list though and I know most of their friends so I am cool with inviting them lol. I told my FH he needs to find out from his dad if he has anyone as far as friends go that he wants invited to the wedding. My FH and I made our list first of friends and family that we wanted to invite and then we are going from there.

We invited friends of our parents who we had a personal meaningful relationship with. We didn’t really ask our parents who they wanted, so much as choosing who we wanted there— the family friends we grew up with. We did not give them full reign to choose friends we don’t even know. But, if they are contributing financially, I feel that they should get a bit of say in selecting a couple people that they really want there.

View Quoted Comment I think that's reasonable. I agree that you should definitely discuss how many she wants to invite and the cost for each additional friend. You should also give this option to your own parents.

I think giving them a few is ok. My FMIL is inviting like 20 people which I think is excessive (as I’m also shy and don’t want to meet 900 people for the first time at my wedding) but she is paying for some vendors so we allowed it.

If she's contributing toward anything financially, I would extend the offer. If not, she's welcome to pay for those people's plates

I'm in the same boat, and the way I see it is that if YOU and YOUR FIANCE are paying for a majority, then YOU are the ones who get to pick guests. Nobody else! If they pay for smaller things (maybe the cake, pay towards food or venue, etc.) then I would understand them inviting people ONLY IF you and your fiance know them and want them there. If not, then #SorryNotSorry

I'd say to jut let it go if it were a bigger wedding (I'm having to do this) but with it being so intimate, I would tell her no. It's already weird to have people you don't know there but when you want to limit it to 40 guests, I wouldn't feel like giving up seats for people you don't know. If she in contributing, I'd stand my ground and be prepared for her to withdraw her money.

My FMIL did the same thing. We ended up giving her a certain number of guests she could invite since her and my FFIL gave us money to help pay for the wedding. In my opinion, if they are not contributing financially, then they get zero say in your guest list. If they are helping, they should get to invite some of their own guests. It was a compromise for us that worked...

We are having an intimate wedding as well and headed this off by including family friends in our guest list, which we ran by our families. We did have some hard discussions when my mom decided that she wanted to invite a few others. Our criteria ended up being that they had to be people that were currently important in her life, I know well, and the reason for inviting them couldn’t be that “they invited us to their child’s wedding”. My parents will be making a contribution to the cost of food, which eased the cost issue but made major issues for the venue selection. Where we live on the other side of the country from our families and will be getting married where we live, a lot of these people (as well as many people who are important to us) are unable to attend. I think it’s a lot easier to advocate for an intimate wedding when people have to travel.

If you're paying for your wedding, I think you're being extremely reasonable saying 2-4 friends is your limit. We had to tell my future Grandmother in Law that she couldnt invite her entourage, and while that can be uncomfortable at first, I feel much better just getting it in the open. Good luck!

Both our moms wanted to add friends to the list, and our list was already brimming over. We ended up inviting only people off of the parents' extraneous lists who we actually had strong personal relationships with--like the ones we feel are second parents or "aunts" or whatever.

Mine tried to invite 3 friends. We had a max of 30 guests so we told her she could bring 1 plus one period. She listened to us cause she's awesome.

I seem to have the opposite problem - I asked both of my parents (divorced) if they wanted additional invites for anyone else and they both said they didn't want to invite anyone else. Not surprising as their social networks aren't great. I think setting the limit with your MIL sounds like a good idea - 3 or 4 sounds like a great number to me.