What do you say to those who aren't invited?

I did a search and didn't find anything about this specifically. FH and I were talking yesterday, and he is concerned about where to draw the line about who is invited and who isn't. I'm okay with not inviting people, but how do you tell them they're not invited when they assume they are? Right now our invite list is about 85, but about 50 will come. I DO NOT want to add any more. I've already added about 20 to my original number because my parents have to invite their friends but I didn't argue too much because they offered to pay for a lot of the wedding (and their friends will come).

If I tell them "don't worry, we'll have a reception when we get home" what can I expect the general response to be? And if I don't speak to them directly, how do I tell them about the AHR without directing them to our website?

Just trying to plan ahead to avoid as much awkwardness as I can.

Hmmm, I am not really sure what advice I have. I invited everyone to the wedding and AHR for that same reason. I figured only the people close would travel anyway, but when I tried to draw a line, there were so many exceptions to the rules, that I didn't want to hurt anyones feelings. Sorry I couldn't be more help!

There is no etiquette for doing that for a traditional wedding? I am sure sometimes the people invite certain people to the church and certain people to the reception...

So, I didn't really get too much flack for this even though I only invited 30 people to our wedding. We had a strict cut off though (immediate family, my grandparents, and then closest friends) and we agreed no second round invites.

I did have one aunt make a comment before the invites were sent out that she hoped she was considered "immediate" family. She wasn't and I didn't hear a peep about that.

We purposely chose a small place and on our wedding website we said something like "unfortunately we could not invite everyone we wanted to the wedding due to the small size of our location, but that we planned to hold a reception at home so that everyone could celebrate with us". You can see my site if you are interested in the exact wording (alishaandmatt.weddingwindow.com).

And everyone that asked about the wedding I also told verbally that we would have an AHR and my mom and his mom and our siblings passed the word pretty well on that. We also sent out STD's for the AHR and our invites our out now too, so everyone knows.

We are/will be directing people to the wedding website though because it's for both the wedding and reception so hopefully no one will be insulted. Honestly though, at this point I could give a sh** if someone is, I mean I've done the best I can and that's all I can do. You can't make everyone happy, and you shouldn't try.

Well said, Alisha!

Great advice Alisha!

We did something similar - made a rule that we were only inviting people that we really wanted to be there. We did not want any "extras". So our guideline was that we would only invite people that were important to us individually or as a couple - people that helped form who we are as people & as a couple.

Anybody else who bitched about it got this speech "we decided to do a very small, intimate wedding. we really want our families to get to know eachother, so the focus is on them." End of story. And f*ck you if you can't understand its OUR WEDDING!!

I totally agree- thanks Alisha and Christa. And it is mostly Mike who is concerned, not me so I'll have to give him your advice.

We said we were having a small wedding out of the country with family & close friends. 99% of people understood, the other 1% were a little batty and thought we were close friends even though I've never seen them outside of the office.

Don't cave and don't mention the AHR to people you don't want there either )

Not the same problem you are faced with ... as we actually are inviting everyone (wwaayy too many people -- like friends of FI's parents who we've never even met) but most of the "aren't I invited" people won't actually come anyway. Our invitations invite everyone to both the DW and AHR, with the RSVP card asking for responses to each event. We have almost 50 people booked so far ... with maybe another 20 once the actual invites go out. We are okay with just "friends" coming -- so I know this isn't much help ... but I didn't want to make 2 different sets of invites, etc, so we just decided if we wanted them at the AHR, we'd invite them to the whole she-bang ... knowing (hoping) many will only make it to the AHR.

This can definitely be a sticky issue ... My FI and I work at the same place (I'm only there part-time while I'm in school) --- but this seems to greatly increase the number of potential guests! That's what gave me chest pain when I started thinking about a wedding at home!

When we decided on a DW - we decided that our rule was if you can't pick up the phone and call the person without them wondering if something's wrong or thinking it's weird that you're calling them ... then they weren't on the list.

We also didn't go down the road of feeling "obligated" to invite distant cousins and other relatives that we NEVER talk to ...

It has worked out really well --- we've invited only about 50 including family and when we think about the wedding, we get really excited about it being small and intimate with our closest friends and family. It looks like we're going to have around 35 ...

As for the co-workers and others that weren't invited ... I put all the blame on me and said that the thought of planning a "big" wedding just gave me anxiety ... so I'm going for a really, really small wedding. We've had a few co-workers joke about "crashing" the wedding ... but in general, they've all been really supportive. I can't tell you how many have pulled me aside and told me that if they had it to do over, they would do the same thing --- cut their guest list in half and go for a small, intimate ceremony!

I think most people will understand! Good luck!

We didn't have this problem, we invited all of our family and close friends, and if anyone expressed an interest in wanting to be there we invited them. We figured if they were willing to go so far to be with us to get married, then they were more then welcomed.