Wedding nightmare

LegacyUser

Myself and the other half are in the early stages of planning a wedding, we wanted to keep the numbers tight enough but now find we are having big arguments about how to divvy up the spaces. When we saw a venue and thought 120ish was doable and affordable I started to draw my list. His family is massive so he doesn't think it should be 60ppl me 60ppl him. He also thinks we should have a standard for both sides - i.e. no cousins or all cousins. The problem is my extended family on both sides, Grandparents, Aunts Uncles, Cousins comes to a grand total of 30 people! His extended is 100+. I am close to my family, he can barely recognize his cousins on the street. HE says it would look bad to his family if all my cousins were invited and none of theirs. I say it will look bad for ME if his side of the church has 170 family and friends and I have less than a third of that. Any advice please!! It is upsetting me and driving me mad.

Big Bag of Chips

Why does it have to be ALL of yours, and NONE of his? I think he's just being dramatic.

What is the standard in his family? Are all cousins invited to all weddings? Or is he the first of all these cousins to actually get married?

When I got married I invited all my first cousins from my dad's side. I'm close to them all (3 families - 11 cousins in total - plus some partners) I invited no cousins from my mam's side, (7 cousins in total) because I'm just not that close to them. All our family weddings, all cousins from my dad's side are always invited.. with long term partners/spouses etc.

In the early stages of planning the one thing to realise that no matter what you do someone's nose will be out of joint. But you also need to realise that they will get over it!

Edit: Just thinking about it again, none of my husband's cousins were there! We didn't invite any of them, because he's not that close to any of them. We get invited to my cousins' weddings, we don't get invited to his cousins' weddings! Some of his parent's cousins were there though. His mother has 22 siblings. Not even all of them were invited!

highly1111

Myself and my husband were in the same situation. Then we realised the best thing to do was 'expectation' invitations! Basically we both have cousins who we wouldn't know if we passed them in the street. Therefore we would never expect to be invited to their weddings so why would they be invited to ours. All this all or nothing is rubbish in my opinion. If you are close you invite them and if you're not you don't. And if he has 15 close cousins and you only have 5 then who cares?? Its about who you want there on the day.

The best advice i ever got for wedding planning is that the people who matter don't mind and the people that mind don't matter.

Enjoy the planning. It's a really exciting time.

If you have 120 spaces, I'd say take 50 each for your 50 most important people, and then sit down over the last 20 and make a decision together about it. So if you fill your first 100 places and his next potential guest is a very close friend, whereas yours is a work acquaintance, you can decide together that his guest probably deserves the space. But you definitely deserve to have almost equal numbers.

Him having more spaces purely because he has a bigger family is unfair. The point of bringing guests to a wedding is to have people to share your special day, not to fulfill familial obligations. You deserve to look into the crowd and know that a substantial amount of them are there supporting you.

blatantrereg

Of course it should be 50/50, unless one party is happy to have a smaller number. Not fair and not good that he is more worried about appearances and appeasing others than you being happy on your wedding day. Best to cancel.

Neyite

OP, there is a Weddings forum here on Boards where I think that your issue like yours has came up before, you might find some tips there.

While I dont agree with him getting the bigger quota, I do see that you open up a minefield by inviting one side of cousins and not the other. It may not be YOU that has to listen to the hassle it causes, but your future mother-in-law and she will bend the ear of your husband.

I think that if you cant agree on this, then you might need to consider a family only wedding -parents, siblings and their children, no aunties or uncles or cousins, with maybe a bigger informal party a few weeks later that is a free-for-all?

LegacyUser

Trying to sort out who to invite to a wedding seems to bring out the "best" in people.
You can afford to have apox 120 at your wedding. If he can barely recognize his cousins on the street why should he have them at his wedding.

If he is still going on about asking all the cousins to the wedding ask him is this what your Mother wants. Some mothers in law seem to think they can invite every relation that are still alive along with all the people that invited them to a wedding over the past 30 years.
I would nicely say something like this to her we can invite x number to the wedding and we are working on the list at the moment. You need to let her know in a nice way this is your day and not her's.

I would tell him that you need to keep your numbers around the same.

For a wedding I would start with the following: Your parents and his, both sets of brothers, sisters and there partners. If they have children decided if you want babies and children there. There parents might be glad to have a child free day.
I would then invite all aunts and uncles and there partners on both sides once you know them all. Also ask both sets of god parents and partners before going on to the rest of your list.
I would then invite the cousins and there partners that are around your own age or the ones that you are the most friendly with. If you find your numbers are very high doing this why not ask your friends and partners to the whole wedding and ask all the cousins to the afters.

On your day you want your families and friends there and not people that you have never seen before.
Good Luck

Big Bag of Chips

For ours we had numbers, I think the room could comfortably hold 120.
We started our list of people who were definitely going to be asked. It was a list that could not be changed.

We had immediate family, obviously, Aunts, uncles, my cousins that I'm close to, and other extended relations that we were equally close to and friends.

That list came to 80 (maybe slightly skewed in my favour, due to the cousins, but not majorily - he had more of his childhood friends than I did so it balanced out.)
We then told both parents that that left 40 places. And they could decide who to invite. These were people that we weren't particularly close to, but it was important to our parents for them to be there.

That gave our parents 40 people to workout between them. We told them the original list could not be changed, because we didn't want our friends being bumped off the list in favour of a distant relative or friend from 50 years ago, who we didn't know!

Luckily most of the people they would really have wanted there were already included in our 80. So they didn't even fill the 40 other places.

Get your definite list together, and then let the parents know how many are left. It's then up to them to whittle down the "hangers on" to fit your numbers.

Good luck - it'll all work out in the end, and you'll have a great day.

desbrook

OP you need to stop worrying about how things will look and look at the reality. It's not your OHs fault that he has a big family compared to yours, in practice most weddings have a 70/30 balance one way or the other. Mine did. I was the 30% by the way!
Did I moan? No because 70% of our wedding gifts ( money) came from her side therefore! Also you are the woman of the house so let's be frank - you'll decide how most of it gets spent anyway.
If you aren't asking for money you're nuts! do .. that way a bigger wedding will cost less. I've known some who made a profit
If all this doesn't sound appealing I understand. Have a small family wedding abroad and avoid all the politics . I might be doing it second time around in a year or two. This time I really just want me and and my girlfriend couldn't give a stuff about any guest. That's because I've realised what's important - only took 40 years plus!

Vojera

You say your extended family will come to 30 people. Realistically, will you be inviting another 30 friends on top of that? Or are you more likely to have, say, another 10-15? There's no point in having a row about splitting the number 50/50 if you won't actually have half the number. That said, because your side is smaller then to me that should mean there's no option for him to bump someone off your list to invite someone on his side.

As for the all or nothing attitude r.e. cousins, it really doesn't have to be that way. I got married last month and invited all my cousins because my family is really close, whereas my wife only asked the cousins she likes. I wouldn't worry too much about what other people think because the one guarantee you have with a wedding is that someone is going to take the hump over something, no matter how much you try to please and accommodate people.