Groom has large family - budget problems

We have a similar problem and the only way to make it fair was to make a no cousins rule. All his aunties and uncles have invites but none of their kids.

I have 26 people and he has 39!

I dont think its unreasonable at all to ask whether they can contribute for their share. If their side are making up say 60% of guests, then they should pay that share. What does your OH think?

Tbh i would have the budget talk asap with the parents and see how much they are able to pay and if you cant afford to put any extra in yourselves then unfortunatly tell your groom he has no choice but to cut it for the day at least and if his parents do get funny they may offer more when u explain that you only have 25 whereas their side need 45, in the nicest way that is. you wont know though until you ask x

I think you need to find out what budget you are working to, who's paying for what etc then sit down with the guest list.

My other half has 18! They all have at least 2 kids each,

I was in a very similar situation to you. My family compromises of my parents, my brother and his wife - that's it. Mr T's family is huge, I mean seriously big with them living all over the country. Our budget was 5K. This meant that we had to cut it down. I would get your OH to write a list of the people in his family he sees, remembers etc. Not everyone he knows he should write down or all the ones he has seen marry but the ones he actually knows. A problem we found was inviting one sibling as opposed to another and the only way we found was to be ruthless - had he seen them recently, did he know them etc. It may also be worth asking his parents. Asking Mr T's let us cross off a couple from the list as we were told that certain people would understand that we were having a small intimate wedding.

Personally? No I do not think you can do this. But only you know the relationship that you and your OH have with his parents and their likely ability to give you more.

An easy way is to find your venue and make sure it is small and intimate. If you can not have a large wedding there then people will have to accept that there will only be 50ish guests. There is no way we could have had more in the ceremony room (there just wasn't room for the chairs) the restaurant didn't have the room to seat any more but come the evening once the ceremony room was set up for the party there was plenty of room for more people.

Another thing that helped OH decide that numbers really needed to be kept to min was that we are both foodies. I am not sure if you are similar but if you are it may be worth pointing out to your OH that with lower numbers the quality of your meal/ wine/ Champagne will be better.

Hope some of that helps. x

Our venue had a max 64 for the ceremony and wedding breakfast, so we were very limited. I have a much larger family than my fiance, and we split the guest list down the middle, but while he can invite all his family and 4 couples from his friends, I am ONLY inviting family, and all the cousins on my dad's side of the family have been relegated to evening guest status.

What we've decided is to have a rolling invite scheme. We'll send out all the invites for the day first 6 months before the wedding, then as we get no rsvps, we will send out additional day invites to my cousins when there's enough space for them all, then if we still have room in the day after inviting them we will move on to friends. Then finally we'll be sending out the evening invites 3 months before the wedding. If we want to bump anyone up after that point we'll talk to them in individually.

I'm not sure how I would feel pulling a "your family is bigger, so you need to pay more". But then again, I'm not the kind of person who feels comfortable splitting a dinner bill any way other than equally between all parties, even if everyone else drank loads and I had water.

It sounds like he needs to be a bit more ruthless with his side of the family/friends and only invite those that he's closest to. This is, afterall, your wedding and not just some party.

I know you've said that he must invite his cousins, but this is something we avoided in order to cut down the numbers. Besides, we don't see our cousins at all anymore.

Exactly this. My side of the family is huge compared to my OH and I had to think about which cousins I actually see and speak to and only invite those. I've also only managed to invite about 7 friends. However, we are doing exactly as Venart has said she is doing. The overseas invites have gone out already and if we (hopefully) get some no's from those, then we will bump some people up. It was really hard and I fell out with my mum over it, but you have to be ruthless. People should understand, particularly if they have been through the process themselves. It's not just the food cost you need to think about either - you'll need extra favours, extra place cards, extra invites, extra orders of service, extra centre pieces, extra chair covers etc the more people you have. Of course you may not want all of these things, but it is something to consider.

I completely sympathise, I could have written the first post myself!

My OH has about 35 family on the guest list to my 12. That is literally my entire family whereas that is a cut down version of his and we still have to negotiate the politics of not inviting siblings etc. In fact on our guest list my family, my friends and our joint friends are significantly out numbered by his friends and family.

The thing I feel awful about is that my parents are footing a large part of the bill. His parents don't work and struggle for money and so can't contribute anything. My mum and I sat there on Monday and she said I needed to cut the guest list down but she just doesn't seem to realise that I can't. The OH refuses to back down on some people who I think it's stupid to invite (Great Aunts and the like) so at the minute we have 120 just for the daytime!!!! Admittedly it hasn't phased my dad as much as I thought it would, but I feel awful that he's going to spend so much money when there are at least 20 people on the list that I don't know, although I've been told that I have met them once. My OH is struggling to save every penny he can and I'm sure that part of it is because he feels bad about the numbers, but I just wish he could figure out a way to be more ruthless and save us some money that way....

Good luck!

Were in the same boat i have 3 siblings and he has 9 who are all grown up, married and have had children, some who are married themselves or are living with partners, so our "budget" guestlist went from 50 to 75 for the church/wedding breakfast, we just raised our budget. However we have drawn the line at family who we never see, and don't know as a couple.

I'm in the same situation but on the opposite side of the fence. I have a huge family compared to my OH. I have over double his numbers, I can understand where hes coming from with cutting the numbers, I have tried and tried to cut down my numbers, so much so that the only friends I am having during the day are my 2 BM's. It is just impossible for me to cut any others out and have stressed and stressed about it. My mum and dad are contributing alot more than his though, I think you need to talk to both your parents asap x

Good luck with the budget talk!

It can be hard to cull your guest list. We have an absolute max of 80 guests and our list came to 98. It's been hard to decide which 18 people would go on to the 'reserve' list and not be invited until we receive declines but I went through the list and identified anyone we hadn't really been in touch with for more than 18 months and used this as one criteria. OH tried to hang on to some of his friends but I pointed out that some of them hadn't even acknowledged us being engaged so I felt they shouldn't really be a priority. For fairness, I did the same with a few of my friends. I think as it stands we've invited 84 people. I imagine we'll get some declines so we should still be within our numbers.

I hope that you can get a better idea of who you'll be able to invite when you've sat down and talked money with the in-laws. I don't think people always appreciate how much adding additional guests costs. My mum wanted to invite 10 people from her work and I had to point out that this would be an additional £100 per head for food, their drinks, it would mean an additional table so that's another centrepiece, the stationery for 10 extra people... The costs mount up!! People also need to remember it's you and your OH's day, if you want it small and intimate, then that's how you have it!