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Original poster

Very limited guest list for wedding and mum wants to invite all her friends

308 replies

bells2810 · 30/08/2022 13:45

My fiancé and I are planning on getting married in a small venue with 50 guests at an absolute maximum. With our immediate families and then grandparents, aunts and uncles, as well as my fiancé’s best man, and two bridesmaids for me, this comes to 47 which we were happy with.

My parents have very kindly offered to help us to pay for the wedding. My mum is now saying that she wants to invite her friends to our wedding. We aren’t having a separate day/night do with extra guests arriving later etc, our only friends who are coming are in our bridal party because we wanted to keep it small and intimate. When I said this to my mum, she said I was being ungrateful and said I should remember that she is helping to pay for it.

My fiancé and I aren’t even inviting all the friends we would have invited in an ideal world because we want to keep numbers and costs down, and we had also wanted to keep it intimate. I’ve tried to explain this to my mum and she keeps bringing up the money. She wants to invite her three best friends and their partners, as well as at least four other friends and their husbands too. This would take us over the 50 guest list limit and the only way we’d be able to accommodate it is if my fiancé and I cut down our list of family or don’t have anyone in our bridal party!!

I don’t know what to do, I don’t want to upset my mum and she is helping us financially but I can’t help thinking she has had her wedding, my fiancé and I don’t want to invite loads of people who aren’t our own close friends. I don’t know how to broach this with my mum without her getting defensive, angry or upset with us. Does anyone have any tips or had a similar experience?

OP posts:
Bingisamoaner · 30/08/2022 17:11

Give the money back and invite who you want. It won't stop at the guest list. You'll end up with loads of shit you don't want.

antelopevalley · 30/08/2022 17:11

This used to be a common issue when families paid routinely for weddings. There is a reason most couples now pay for their own wedding.

KosherDill · 30/08/2022 17:12

Pay for your own wedding. Better a cheap picnic in the park than starting married life beholden to your parents for the cost of a one-day party. You'll be just as married either way.

Tell her to host herself an anniversary party or something if she wants to be the center of her friends' attention at a big do.

I have to wonder -- why is she so dependent on the companionship/attention/opinion of these friends?

neverbeenskiing · 30/08/2022 17:13

Its 6 extra people to have your DM’s best friends. Why is 50 the magic number?
You won’t even notice 6 more on the day.

But if OP's DM is allowed to invite 6 friends then her Fiancé might feel he has to let his parents invite some friends too. Before you know it that's a dozen extra people which really bumps up the cost.

These things do tend to spiral once you relax your limit on numbers. When we got married PIL wanted us to invite MIL's cousin and her husband, ok we thought so we've never met them but it's only two people. As soon as we agreed she then started trying to insist that that this cousins three adult DC and their partners must also be invited. My DM then found out and felt it was unfair as cousins from her side of the family hadn't been invited. FIL started saying if MIL's cousins were coming we needed more of his side of the family there, again people DH and I didn't know from Adam. I ended up putting my foot down and saying that's it, I am not having anyone at my wedding that DH and I haven't met. PIL were really shocked and said in their opinion the "whole point" of having a wedding is to see family and friends they haven't seen for years. DH explained that the whole point was to celebrate our marriage and if they wanted a family reunion they could have one at their house whenever they wanted.

antelopevalley · 30/08/2022 17:17

When families paid for weddings they were family reunions and very much about the wider family. I went to one in Birmingham with 300 people and quite a few relatives the Bride, my friend, had never met.
Weddings are different now though in Britain.

StaunchMomma · 30/08/2022 17:20

I think you need to postpone, save for longer and pay for your own wedding, OP.

Your Mum is behaving disgracefully. I can't believe she would emotionally blackmail you into a situation in which you are forced to cut friends and family members to accommodate her friends!!

You need to plan the day on your terms. Have you considered marrying alone abroad and then having a big evening party later?

Let them have their money back and make changes you feel ok with, even if it means your wedding looking different to what you'd imagined. If you let her have her way you will look back on your special day with a degree of negativity and that's just not OK.

Pixiedust1234 · 30/08/2022 17:20

Tell your mother that if her friends come then she can't. Limited numbers and all that 😂

Otherwise return her money and say thanks, but no thanks.

jay55 · 30/08/2022 17:25

Tell your mum her friends can go, but she'll have to be univited to make way for them, along with list of people from her family.

BeetBeats · 30/08/2022 17:29

Yep. This happened to us. We offered to give the money back and she soon backed down because she didn’t want everybody to know why we didn’t take her money.

RelentlessForwardProgress · 30/08/2022 17:30

I had this in my wedding, and didn't have enough of a backbone about it. It was really tiresome on the day as I kept having to talk to people who I had no clue who they were, but wanted to talk to me. Now when I look back at my wedding pictures I don't know who half of the people in the pictures are!

PlanetNormal · 30/08/2022 17:34

What is it about weddings which turns otherwise reasonable women into total nightmares? I have never met a man who gives a toss about most of the stuff which causes wedding drama.

I agree with everyone else, OP. Hand the money back and have the wedding you want. Problem solved.

WavePlant · 30/08/2022 17:37

@crosstalk soinds like your family were great. My mother got married late 70’s and didn’t choose the guest list nor the venue, her parents did, she expected to have the same control over mine, as did the in-laws.

cingolimama · 30/08/2022 17:38

I'm going to go against the grain here, and ask why is 50 the absolute limit? Would it really be so awful to add six more places so your mum can bring her close friends and partners? I think it's a normal impulse for the mother of the bride to want to "show off" a bit (in a nice way). And while I don't approve of her bringing up the money, (as pp have pointed out, a gift should come without strings), surely there's some compromise possible?

Btw, congratulations!

Pipsquiggle · 30/08/2022 17:38

Show her your guest list.

Tell her which close friends you would like to invite but are choosing not to as you want to keep the guest list to below 50.

If she still doesn't understand, offer to give her money back. As this really isn't the wedding you wanted.

SheBuilds · 30/08/2022 17:39

Essentially you are treading on eggshells around your DM because if she gives you the money you are beholden to her, and I suspect if you don’t accept the money you will probably equally upset her.

Either way, sometimes it’s better to remember that it isn’t you fault she isn’t currently the mother you want/need her to be, and it’s not your responsibility to sacrifice yourself to keep her happy. If her narcissistic need for control on your big day is causing you this much upset I would just tell her if she carries on this way she won’t even get an invite for herself never mind her friends.

WhenISnappedAndFarted · 30/08/2022 17:39

This is why my DP and I are paying for our own wedding. My family offered but I know if we accepted then there will be a whole load of strings.

If I were you I'd give the money back, pay for your own wedding and have it exactly how you want it.

Wibbly1008 · 30/08/2022 17:40

Please do what you want for your wedding. I gave in to my parents and it backfired with people I didn’t want but invited anyway, behaving disgracefully and spoiling it. I have never forgiven my parents for that and it has always been “between” us since then.

closingloop · 30/08/2022 17:40

Has anyone suggested giving the money back? FFS people!!

CookieCoo · 30/08/2022 17:43

This is precisely why we paid for our own wedding. We only had 84 people at our wedding….44 were people I wouldn’t have chosen to invite!! I wish I’d not included Aunts/uncles/cousins/random parent friends!! i.e. people we saw at our wedding and maybe once or never in the 15 years since!!!

Bonbon21 · 30/08/2022 17:45

Not her wedding.
She is buying your day.
Give her the money back.
Gifts dont come with strings .... just love.
Have the wedding you want, but dont be surprised OR manipulated if she announces she is not coming!!

SleepingStandingUp · 30/08/2022 17:46

cingolimama · 30/08/2022 17:38

I'm going to go against the grain here, and ask why is 50 the absolute limit? Would it really be so awful to add six more places so your mum can bring her close friends and partners? I think it's a normal impulse for the mother of the bride to want to "show off" a bit (in a nice way). And while I don't approve of her bringing up the money, (as pp have pointed out, a gift should come without strings), surely there's some compromise possible?

Btw, congratulations!

Because you can't force a venue to exceed their capacity because the Mom wants to show off that she's got a kid who's marriage material

DeclansAFeckingDream · 30/08/2022 17:48

We sort of had this issue. DHs mum offered to help pay for our wedding on the condition that she could invite all her friends. We knew exactly what to say (DH knew she would do this) as we had decided from the start that our wedding would be very small (35) and we would pay for it all ourselves. She was most put out.

KohlaParasaurus · 30/08/2022 17:49

If you want to stay on good terms with your mother and not have a cloud hanging over your wedding plans and the day itself it would be worth having a discussion with her about whether she could increase her financial contribution to cover the cost of the sort of wedding she wants for you. Her friends might be a good addition to the experience. The alternative, as others have said, is to give the money back, explain that you and your fiancé have chosen the type of wedding you're having and the guests you've invited for personal reasons that are not negotiable, and hope that your mother sees the sense in this.

I had a large "full meringue" wedding first time round with my parents paying for it and controlling the guest list, and it went very smoothly, although it's telling that my sisters felt as if Mum had got "her" ideal wedding out of her system with me and chose to have much smaller weddings with parents invited as guests but having no other input.

Gassylady · 30/08/2022 17:51

Pay for it all yourself and have the wedding you want. Small and intimate sounds lovely

SleepingStandingUp · 30/08/2022 17:54

economicervix · 30/08/2022 17:03

Who would even want to go to a mates kids wedding anyway (apart from @HazelBite)😂 it’s rude to accept obligation invites for anything.

Some people's friends kids are akin to nieces and nephews tho, not just "rando adult kid of a woman I know". Several of my school friends Mom's (who I was still friends with) came to my church service, they'd known me via their own child for 20 years.

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