To ask when/how you made the transition from your own extended family to your child’s?

[Movingsoon21]

DH and I are both quite close to our own extended families (aunts, uncles, cousins). Neither family is huge on its own but together the families are 38 people, as opposed to 15 people in our joint immediate families (parents and siblings).

Growing up, our whole extended families were invited to all events - birthdays, weddings, christenings etc, and we automatically invited them to our wedding in 2019. However we now have DC and are finding it too difficult and expensive to continue inviting the whole wider family to DC’s occasions. We ended up spending double what we wanted to on the christening reception for DC1 even though we didn’t do anything fancy or extravagant, just on the amount of food and drink (and space) needed for that many people. Our aunts and uncles are now getting elderly so they need a comfy place to sit and good heating, so that rules out parks and the like and we can’t really fit them all in our house, even for a buffet style lunch.

we do really like our aunts and uncles and don’t want to offend them by suddenly stopping the invites but equally we feel the events for DC should now just be attended by DC’s aunts, uncles and cousins rather than ours, IYSWIM. Plus we’d like to invite friends but never have enough space for them. The christening for DC2 is coming up, which has prompted this question.

Has anyone else been in the same situation? How did you handle it?

[Fink]

I agree with pp, baptisms, marriages, and other big one-off events the whole family get invited. Like we had a birthday party for my dad recently and extended family was literally anyone related - we had e.g. his first cousins twice removed, his second cousin's widower etc. But it still wasn't massive because no one came from my mum's family except those who live close by.

For events like dc's birthdays, stick to immediate family. When they get older, you can have a family tea party/barbecue and an active party for friends.

You will still see the extended family, as presumably you would invite them to your own birthday parties, see them over Christmas etc. But you don't need to invite them all to everything.

It sounds like your extended family is quite small anyway, since it's only 23 people on top of your immediate family. And if a lot of them are elderly then they won't be around forever. In the short term, I'd do as above - invite them to clearly family-oriented events like christenings, but not to dc-oriented events.