What would you think of your mother in law wanted to invite 3 friends to your wedding, you’ve not met before

[Lastdaysofsummer26]

three of her friends
you’ve not meet in 6 years you’ve been together ?

We had some of our in laws friends and my parents friends attend the evening. Not the actual wedding as dh and I were paying.

If your finance knows and likes them it’s harder to say no. Does he?

My parents invited 50 plus to my wedding night do, more than the number me and DH invited. They were paying for it but I felt very awkward accepting gifts off strangers and my mum hanging about trying to force conversation. Got railroaded into a lot of stuff I wasn’t happy with and it’s a huge regret of mine.

My (now ex) MIL asked to invite my ex-husbands two Great Aunties (his dads aunties) and their husbands. His dad had passed away a couple of years before and he had no siblings (so no uncles/aunties for my ex-h). His grandad had also died earlier in the year so his dad’s immediate side of the family was very very small. I was fine with this as it was only 4 extra people and I knew this would have made my FIL really happy too.

The only thing is she went further….. she then asked if we could invite the great aunties children (3 extra adults) so I said ok that’s fine. This is where it then got silly. She then asked for their children to be invited (4 more young adults) and then we would have to invite their children too (2 small children). So the 4 extra I had originally agreed to plus 9 others I hadn’t even met, and my ex-h had only seen a couple of times in the 5 years we had been together. On my reasonably small 50 people wedding!

I offered for them to come to the evening do and this wasn’t acceptable. She offered to pay but it wasn’t about the money. It was about not knowing about 15% of the guests at my own wedding! If it had been a big wedding then maybe but we had been very select about our guest lists. It was already bigger than I had wanted and I refused to back down. I was happy with the original 4!

The invites went out. Day invites to the great aunties and their husbands and evening invites to the rest. And after all that - not one of them came!!

So a couple of extras is fine if makes her MIL happy but stand firm on any more! Or as I did - suggest evening only :-)

To me it's depend on why. My gran had a very dear friend, and my gran barely knew anyone at my wedding, so we invited the friend as company, even though I barely knew her and my husband had never met her.

If MIL has a partner attending or lots of other family she knows and likes i would be wondering why, unless they were close to DH when he was younger?

We invited some of our parent’s neighbours and friends so they’d have a good night too (and we wouldn’t have to worry about them!!)

Hard no to that. It is your wedding. Not hers.

If it's your wedding then you need to be a good host and ensure everyone enjoys the evening. The MIL is an important person in the OP's niece's future, it is expedient to allocate her some guests of her choosing so she can share the joy of her son getting married, it's an important day for her and it's not unreasonable of her to want some of her friends there. Not recognising that is a very immature and selfish attitude.

When you are young your circle is still changing but your parents generation will remain constant and they are the ones who can support you during your marriage in a way your friends can't.

There's one major problem with this argument...

How do you think those friends became such good friends in the first place? Long-term friendships don't happen overnight. You have to invest in them, build them over time... maybe through things like an invitation to your wedding? Making room for long-term friends of your parents is all well and good - but they were new friends once too.

If you need support during your marriage and can't turn to your friends, how do you ever hope to build the kind of relationships where your kids will feel they can turn to them in years to come?

If she’s paying for the meals, then no issue. Otherwise it depends on how you feel about your future MIL.

evening or meal? meal costs do no. unless she has no partner and would be lonely then she can have 1. if its the evening then no cost to you so ok fine anything to make her like you