I think this is a terrible idea, but I’ll explain the situation.
So I am getting married in spring of 2028 and we have officially booked our venue. We’re now compiling our guest list and we’ve run into an issue with my MIL.
For budget reasons, we need to keep our guest to around 110-115 people. We each have space to invite 50 people for each side and around 10 mutual friends. MIL has added an additional 12 people that she says have to be there (not her family members, these are her 12 best friends).
The sides are now uneven with fiancé’s side at around 73 and me 50. With her add on’s, we can’t afford all of the of the people on my fiancé’s side. We would either need to cut her friend group or all the children on my fiancé’s side (there are 16 of them). I told MIL this and she said the kids don’t need to be included. My issue with this is that there will be at least 14 kids on my side attending. I am concerned about telling the parents on my fiancé’s side that their kids are not invited and having them show up and see that there are kids there. I think they’ll be upset if they have to arrange childcare/not come due to not finding childcare, only to find out that it is not a child free wedding, just child free for them. I feel there will be backlash for this.
MIL then suggests making it a fully child free wedding and not invite any children at all. Not an option for me, I’m very close to the children in my family and made clear from the beginning that we would not be having a child free wedding.
I told MIL that I’m fine with making it child free on their side, but that children will be invited on my side, so as long as she makes it clear to her family that the decision is hers and not me and my fiancé’s. She said that fine, but I feel I as the Bride and going to be the one blamed for this if her family gets upset.
Fiancé doesn’t have strong feelings on the matter, doesn’t care which group gets invited, as long as his side doesn’t end up being way bigger than mine, as I have already made a lot of cuts to accommodate our budget (I have a lot more cousins then he has and am only inviting 15 of my first cousins).
We are paying for the entire wedding ourselves.
Any thoughts?