To say "no-one I don't know" at my wedding?

[Dannilion]

Just hoping for a bit of perspective here as I kind of feel like I am, but don't want to be!

Bit of background..


DP and I are getting married next summer. It's going to be a very cheap wedding as PFB is due next month and well, spending an extortionate amount of money on a glorified party isn't something I want to be doing. Getting into debt isn't an option either of us will consider for it, so it will all be out of our savings.

My dress will be second hand, the rings are from my mums first marriage and therefore free, I'm making my own cake, the evening venue is a marquee in my parents field, my friends band are the entertainment etc so when I say budget I really do mean it!

Anyways, I've digressed. In order to keep the prices down I don't want to pay for people I don't know to be there. For example, friends of DP's he hasn't seen for a decade, and their partners whom he has never met. Family he only saw once in 15 years at a funeral in 2007 etc. Basically my viewpoint is if I haven't met them, they have no significance to us as a couple so why should I pay for them to come to my wedding? We're not asking for gifts or anything as I really just want it to be a time to celebrate with our nearest and dearest. DP isn't happy with this.

Obviously it would be the same for my guests as well. Its his wedding too and I'm wondering if I'm already turning into a bride-zilla?

[expatinscotland]

Sounds reasonable to me as it's applied to both of you.

[squeakytoy]

Not surprised he isnt happy with it. It isnt just your wedding, he plays an equal part in it.

Why be so controlling?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Sounds fair enough to me, but I'd take into account how many people you're each inviting. Obviously if one of you has a bigger family there will probably be an imbalance, but if you're inviting 20 good mates and he's inviting five plus people he's not seen in years, I think it would be fair for him to keep at least some of those he's not seen. To me, it'd suggest he just has a slightly different attitude to friendship.

[NewYearNewBoo]

I did exactly this at my ceremony but let 'others' come to the night. Nothing to do with budget, but I thought the ceremony was too personal to let strangers witness. This did make mil a bit lot annoyed as she had a cousin visiting from new Zealand that week but I stuck to my guns, cousin came after the meal for the afternoon drinks and night time party and my wedding pictures don't have me scratching my head trying to work out who is who. I think you are right to do it this way!

[neolara]

To be honest, I think it's completely irrelevant what a bunch of women you don't know think. The issue is that your dp isn't happy with the situation. And as you are going to be marrying him and hopefully spending the rest of your life with him, ignoring his wishes seems not a great pattern to establish as you set off on your married life together. A compromise would seem the most sensible solution.

[MerryMingeWhingesAgain]

It's your wedding. I had a very modest wedding too - I only invited (from my side) people that I actually know at least a bit, and like. DH however was free to invite anyone he wanted whether I knew them or not. I didn't want either of us inviting people out of duty only.

But what you're suggesting sounds like you want to veto anyone you haven't met, which is bonkers IMHO. DH has lots of relatives, he's from a big close family, and old friends who now live away. Many of whom I met for the first time when we got married My family is massively dysfunctional and I purposely left quite a few off some of who still came anyway . As long as you and DH-to-be agree, that's all that matters.

[AntsMarching]

I'd say decide how many you can afford and then decide how many mutual friends you want to attend. Subtract mutual friends from the total and the leftover amount is divided in half. Each of you get to decide who comes from your half.

E.g. You can afford 100 guests
You have 20 mutual friends so...

100-20=80 places remaining

80/2 = 40 places. You decide who your 40 are (to include parents/siblings) and he decides who his 40 are.

[Geekster]

You do sound a bit unreasonable, though I can see were you are coming from. In your post you say my wedding, rather than our wedding. That sounds a bit bridezilla like

[pepperrabbit]

There were some people we each wanted to attend our wedding that the other one hadn't met for whatever reason. We were only engaged for a few months or so, but we made sure we met everyone before the wedding day.
So we went out for pizza with a few of my friends and something similar with his.
That way no one was a stranger on the day.

[lynniep]

what ants said. I think its completely unreasonable to dictate who your dp invites (within reason of course) but completely understandable to limit numbers for both of you.

[alarkaspree]

It sounds perfectly sensible to me, but as you say it is his wedding too. And it sounds as if his vision for his wedding involves a chance for him to get together with a lot of people he feels a connection with but hasn't seen for a long time, which is not unreasonable.

So you might need to compromise. Can't you work out your budget and see how many people you can afford to invite, then choose half each or something? I think you probably are overestimating how important it is for you to 'know' everybody at your wedding. You will find it hard to find time to talk to everyone you want to anyway, you won't even notice the people who you don't know.

[Patchouli]

It sounds like your DP's friends and family are to be missed off - not yours?
Do the same rules apply to friends/family of yours that he hasn't met?

[Dannilion]

Don't mean to drip feed but obviously everyone he would like to invite would be welcome to the evening part as I don't have to pay for their drinks

There will be a lot more people on his side anyways as his family is a lot bigger, which is obviously fine when they're family he actually sees. I just worry I'm being too bossy because on one hand he wants a cheap, low key wedding and on the other hand seems to want to invite the whole world and his dog.

[BonaDea]

It depends. There are obviously limits on who you should invite and you need to set limits on who those people are in agreement with your fiance.

However, I don't think it is always as simple as saying "only people I've met". For example, through circumstances and geography, I had never met my husband's brother before he came to our wedding. However, to have said he shouldn't come only because I had never met him before would have been completely unreasonable of me. I also think that stopping people from bringing a partner just because you've never met them. can be unreasonable I have some very close friends who happen not to live anywhere near me. This might mean that although I still love them dearly and am in regular contact I might not have met their significant other before our wedding day. This doesn't mean they shouldn't be invited. On the other hand, obviously a very new boyfriend or girlfriend might reasonably be left off the list because of that reason.

I don't think setting hard and fast rules like this works. You each need to write a list of who you each want to invite in an ideal world, see what the numbers look like, then cut down from there if need be.

Good luck!

[BackforGood]

Same as what almost everyone else has said.
It is your dp's wedding as much as yours. He has as much right to invite people as you.
Just because he doesn't 'do' friendships in the same way you do, doesn't make them any less valid.
So, yes YABU to try to dictate 'your' rules onto your DP

[TheFallenNinja]

The more you tell him his friends and acquaintances are irrelevant, the more irrelevant he will feel. Push too hard and he might not feel relevant and not bother turning up himself

[Dannilion]

And yes the rules would apply to me too! Unsure if I mentioned it but DP and I are in our mid-twenties so IMO, if you haven't seen or really spoken to someone (aside from the occasional FB comment) since you were a teenager..You're probably not really friends anymore.

However I do have a habit of being very black & white about things and terribly stubborn..So I'm prepared to be wrong on this.

[Goldenhedgehog]

YABU to try to impose a blanket rule.

However surely it depends on budget. You and your DP agree what your budget is and how many guests you can afford, and there you have it, surely? No need for rules. Either you can afford/have space to invite them or you don't.

[Zaphiro]

Funnily enough Dannilion my DP and I discussed this yesterday. We both want a small wedding, yet he plans to invite friends from college he hasn't seen for five years and their girlfriends that he hasn't even met. I made a little list privately though and there are people I want there that he doesn't know.

Have you agreed a number to invite each? I think that makes it fair. If it's unbalanced due to his large family, you could count family separately and then invite the same number of non-related friends? I like pepperrabbit's idea of meeting people beforehand too.

[ThePavlovianCat]

I can see your point but weddings are a great opportunity to reconnect with people (I am thinking particularly family) that you may have drifted apart from. See it as an opportunity to build bridges.

[WilsonFrickett]

We didn't have partners we didn't know at ours and I really, really regret it now. It was meant to keep the costs down but actually, having now been to hundreds of weddings myself, what it actually meant was a few of my friends wandering around on their own and feeling a bit miserable.

I think if he has a big family, the family 'norm' is probably to invite loads of distant rellies (I was also reacting against that at mine). But I do think you need to compromise - the formula suggested above would be a good place to start.

[austenozzy]

Not U at all. Ours was a small ceremony and only close family and close friends were invited to that bit, the meal and speeches.

The bash in the evening was open to all, with a limited amount of free bar paid for by my dad that ran out when it ran out, and was then a pay bar (venue was a big private room in a lovely riverside pub).

The various family I hadn't seen in a decade or more could come to that if they wanted, and only some did. No hard feelings were expressed, and I still haven't seen the ones that didn't show up seven years later, so nothing lost!

[PaellaUmbrella]

I would say YANBU but only if your DP was in agreement.

In order to keep cost down at our wedding, we actually decided on close family only - 20 guests total and obviously nobody I didn't know! But DH was happy with that too. If he had wanted old friends there, we would have had a different kind of wedding and would have had to have cut costs elsewhere.

Just because your DP hasn't seen a friend in a decade doesn't mean that they're not important to him either.

[Floggingmolly]

How would you feel if he was the one imposing those restrictions on you?
I wouldn't be one bit happy if it were me.