parents inviting guests to the wedding

We gifted our girls their weddings. As a 4 time MOB I will never understand parents inviting friends who have no relationship to the couple. WHY ?

I asked for 2 couples each time for my bio DDs' weddings. They are my best friends, have known my girls since they were babies, and still have a relationship with them. when I asked the girls if it would be ok, they had already planned on inviting them.

I just don't understand being surrounded by people you don't know on your wedding day.

My parents are paying for part of the wedding and were allowed to invite several of their friends, which ended up being about 6 couples. They were all people that I grew up knowing and would have wanted there anyway. FH's parents are not paying for any part of the wedding (aside from RD) and his family is huge (while mine is super tiny), so they did not get to invite whichever friends they wanted. FH invited the friends of his parents that he wanted as guests. That ended up being 2 or 3 couples in addition to his dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins. FILs were not thrilled, but they seem to have gotten over it thankfully.

My mother is inviting her boyfriend, and 3/4 friends. FH and I are paying for 90% of the wedding. I want my mom to have an awesome time and I know all of the friends and enjoy them.

My parents are paying for a good chunk of the wedding, and my mom literally doubled my guest list. It's been frustrating, but since they are paying for the majority, I felt obligated to let them add some people. Thankfully, she didn't add anyone I didn't know. She added people who she thought had an influence in my life growing up (they're all church people). FMIL asked us to invite one couple who wasn't on the list initially. We added them happily because we love them and felt dumb that we think of it first.

My parents are paying for most of the wedding. our venue capacity is 200, and at a point where the guest list was up to 210, my mom added about 20 people i havent seen or talked to in at least a decade, people she went to high school with. I tried to reason with her and she pulled the money card. thats it, the end.

so i took off 20 of my friends, which was all of my friends & their dates. FH has a very small family, so i didnt want to make him trim his side.

when my dad found out what happened, he immediately made my mom take her guests off and told me to put my friends back. he was pretty pissed. my mom kept her 2 best friends (whose kids i grew up with) and their families and her absolute best friend from HS and her husband. I wanted to respect the "they pay, they say" thing but i also want to celebrate with people i know and love, not random strangers.

thank goodness my dad is a rational person. his best friend, who ive always called uncle, is also invited.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

FH and I don't have a ton of friends, most are going to be in the wedding party. The people our parents want to invite know one of us in some way. I have no issues.

Both my parents and my FH parents had say in who was invited. Neither set of parents are paying for the wedding, but we value their opinion.

In a shocking turn of events, the people my parents want to invite I ALSO wanted to invite because they have been in my lives and are amazing people and I grew up with them and love them like family.

And I knew everyone at my wedding. Weird how that works, right? I guess I'm just amazingly intelligent and have a greater capacity to remember the ton of people who have played important roles in my life.

I find it weird when parents want to invite people that their kids don't know, mostly because... how do you not know your parents friends? My dad has had the same close group of friends since he was TWELVE. They're like aunts & uncles to me.

My parents aren't inviting anyone since me and my FH are the ones paying for this. I did invite some of my mom's friends though because they have been with us through thick and thin, since my mom raised me alone. It was more my decision than hers.

Originally, my FMIL wanted us to invite 50-60 people. Half of which FH never met. She knew damn well the max I wanted was 140 people. It would have brought our totals to about 180. When we said no, she offered us $10K for it. We still declined. Hell, even my FFIL was asking her why the hell we had to invite the entire city they were from when they don't care about us and we don't even know them.

Since then that list has decreased to 20. They are helping us out financially. However, we would have declined it if my FMIL kept pushing. And this isn't 20 people that are aunts, uncles, etc. They were already on the list. The 50-60 list were people from her book club, her bell choir at church, people who had kids and they were invited to their kid's weddings so therefore we had to return that favor. Honestly, FFIL sat us down and said he wanted to help pay for his kid's wedding and was pretty cheesed off that she was offering money that a) they couldn't even afford to give and b) bribing us money to invite people she felt would give us a lot of money and make her look cool and not offering us money just for the sake of helping out.

Now the 20 people are people that FH knows, grew up with, and have been around, and some of them were people FH admitted he should have thought of himself.

Until last night, I thought FH and I were alone in paying/planning.

Then my parents hit me with something I did not expect, but am very thankful for. Of course, it lead my mother to say "You and Kyle can invite whoever you want, but it would be really nice if you invited..." Of course, they were people I wanted to invite, but wasn't going to because we're trying to keep the list under 80 people.

Not sure what we're going to do now.

My parents are paying for all of it and they are inviting a few family friends as well. My FMIL is also inviting some friends but we gave her a limit because at first she came to us with a list of 50 + people.

Mikayla- my parents are inviting people they've been friends with since they were in high school and have been around literally my entire life. They watched me grow up, came to my baptism, communion, high school and college graduations. Why wouldn't my parents want to invite them and why wouldn't they want to come? Hell, I put them on the list before even had to ask me to.

Both my parents and the in laws are "strongly suggesting" people (followed by the ever loved 'you better do this or you'll hear a lecture' look) but given that we weren't going to have a wedding originally, and I have no problem shutting down lectures the suggestions will stay just that my wedding, my money, my say.

FILs are paying for the RD, my parents will contribute to a BBQ the next day, but we are paying for the wedding ourselves. We have big families and included children, so I can't increase the guest list any more to offer our parents extra invites. They haven't asked, but FSIL did tell me that FMIL is disappointed she can't invite more work friends. Luckily FH doesn't want anyone we don't know well to be there.

They each have one set of close family friends that we see often at family events. So there is one family invited on both sides. These were parents friends that FH and I added to the list because they are part of our lives. I would consider increasing it to two couples each if I didn't feel obligated to invite whole families together.

My parents are paying for whoever they are inviting. We are paying for whoever we are inviting. They said if we can't afford it they will help but we have to pay them back which I agreed. Mostly because it helped move up our wedding

Both sides are helping us out a bit financially. My parents didn't go crazy - they only invited a few and the ones they did invite are close family friends who have known me my whole life and would have been included if my parents hadn't specifically asked for them to be invited. FMIL gave us the list from her 60th birthday party and told us we could invite whoever we wanted, there were only a few specific people she absolutely wanted to attend. Fine, no problem - we choose who we thought would be appropriate. Fast forward to after I ordered the invitations (I ordered 10 extra) and suddenly she wanted us to add this person and she really thought we should add that person and we could take off these 6 but add these 4. I wasn't sure if I was going to have enough invitations but we ended up with 2 to spare.

My parents paid for a good portion of my first wedding and were allowed to invite whomever they wanted. This time FH and I are footing the bill, just got done stuffing invites and my dad told me yesterday he has a "list" ...hmm we will have to see about this list but I did ask for said list by the end of December and my step mom gave me the addresses for aunts, uncles etc but we had not planned on inviting outside of that... this may get interesting