Destination Wedding, Guest List, bridal shower, etc...

[ETrillion]

So after some thinking, Fi and I have decided on a destination style wedding in Yosemite at the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel. We live in LA and all of our family is local. I have 20 Aunts and Uncles and 27 cousins. I am very close to my mom''s side of the family but not to my dad''s. Fi has a small family, so he doesn''t need to pick and choose between them. my dilemma is: how do i go about inviting certain family members and not others? Each side of the family is very close and i dont want to hurt feelings but inviting one aunt/uncle/cousin and not the other. Fi and I will be paying for the entire wedding ourselves. We''re moving into a house this year, so funds aren''t plentiful. The Ahwahnee is our dream location and we have decided not to compromise on that, even it it means cutting people off the guest list. We can afford to have a reception for 50 people max. my family alone is 52 people. Our immediate family and very close friends total at 24, so that only leaves 12 spots for my family. I have cousins who have eloped or had very intimate weddings on my mom''s side so i think they will be understanding about the issue. We do not want to elope, we want friends and family there when we marry. but we cannot afford to send an invite to everyone and chance them all rsvp''ing yes.
we plan on having a small, casual get together at my aunts house to celebrate with all the family who cant join us on our day. Another question i have: is it in poor taste to have a bridal shower and invite people who will not be invited to the ceremony in yosemite but will be present at the low key reception back home? i dont want to be viewed as begging for handouts. my cousins who have eloped did not have engagement parties, bridal showers, etc so i am lost as to the etiquette in a situation such as this. I would appreciate any advice!

 

[wannaBMrsH]

Is there a way to make even or impartial cuts? For example, no one under the age of 18, only significant others that are living together or engaged, only first cousins, etc?

As far as the shower question...YES, it is extremely tacky to invite people to a bridal shower if they will not be invited to the wedding. I laso had a destination wedding, but in my case, we sent out about 120 invitations and it was up to everyone to decide if they could go or not. We also didn''t set up registries as we felt that due to the high number of people that were unable to attend the wedding, it would look as if we were asking for gifts. I just wanted to spend time with my friends and family and that''s what we did.

I hope that helps.

 

[ETrillion]

unfortunatly, this list (20 aunts/uncles, 27 first cousins) is the paired down version. We have decided to only invite those people over 21, only +1''s who are married/engaged/living together/been dating over 1year. the only solution i can come up with is to invite no extended family, but that hurts my heart. thank you for your advice on the bridal shower/registry issues

 

[ladypirate]

Keep in mind that not everyone will be able to travel for your wedding. We ended up just inviting everyone we wanted to and assuming that only about 50 - 60% would be able to make the trip. So far that is holding true (we''re having the wedding where we live which is 500-1000 miles away from most of our guests).

 

[RaiKai]

DH and I had a DW on Vancouver Island. We do not live near family so decided to do it that way..if they had to travel anyway. We also paid for it ourselves.

We *only* invited people we were close to, family or friend. If we did not have a close relationship to them they were not invited, if we did they were, regardless of bloodlines and the like. We both have very large families but only ended up with 16 guests (we invited 20 but 4 could not make it due to not being able to take leave from military at time). I did not invite anyone on my dads side, including my dad. etc. It meant we had a cousin of DH invited and not the other cousins, we had a friend invited rather than a family member and so on.

We really did not have any drama. We were honest about wanting a very small and intimate wedding. We also had a rather short engagement (2 months) so many did not know we were married until after fact as we tended not to share many details ahead of time - not even with our guests except the location and dates. If there are less details there is less gossip! Most encouraged the smaller wedding and were just supportive.

I find that drama attracts drama...if you don''t try and make it into a drama or buy into or entertain drama that pops up it likely won''t be. It helped that DH and I are both pretty good at also not caring much what others think about our choices, that may sound cold, but we were a team when it came to our wedding planning.

We did not have any pre-wedding parties. Neither of us are fans, and again we do not live near anyone anyway!

Some people do throw receptions after DWs back at home, but there should be no expectation of gifts and they are usually low key.

 

[katamari]

I know this will be an unpopular option, but could you ask your friends to pay their own way and just cover the costs for your family? I personally would feel uncomfortable accepting a vacation from a friend--especially if I knew they were excluding their family members to foot my bill.

Or just talking to people about the possibility of them coming might give you a good idea of who may actually come may also help. When DH and I were entertaining extending our guest list for our DW, the main issue with our family was not cost but time. Many people get very little vacation and often have plans for what they get and may not be willing to spend a chunk of that to go to a wedding.

My personal solution would be to cut your friends, have family only at the wedding, and throw a dinner party with your friends when you return. I understand close friendships and consider most of my close friends family-like. However a wedding really is about the union of families and your family should take president if you have to slash the guest list.

As for the shower, based on my personal experience you could probably invite people coming to the reception only. I did not have a shower as I find them a gift grab in any circumstance. However, my family fought me tooth and nail to have one and everyone seemed like they wanted to attend, even though we only had our immediate families at our actual wedding (and then a reception at home of about 175).