Guest list woes and seating arrangements

Hello all, I am getting married October 7th this year and working on the dreaded guest list and seating arrangements. My fiance and I would like to keep the guest list around 70-80 people. However, he has several friends and coworkers he would like to invite, and so do I. Our mothers have certain people they want to invite as well. I wrote up the list of everyone that should obviously be invited, as well as those that have been mentioned by him or our moms. The list came to 107 people. Now, this isn’t necessarily an issue as my state is allowing 50% capacity in venues and that is well within the capacity. The problem is that my fiance and I have always wanted a smaller wedding - we feel that it would be more personable, not to mention cheaper.


Another issue, my parents are paying for a majority of the wedding so my mom feels like she should have free reign over the guest list to invite whomever she wants. I think she deserves to pick a couple of people she wants there, but she has demanded I invite up to 14 people, who I never speak to nor have a relationship with. I am currently working on a way to meet in the middle with her.
Also, my fiance has a very large family because they are close with their extended family as well. So, we have to invite his extended family members too. From counting up the list, he has about 20 more family members than I do. And he wants to invite coworkers and friends on top of that. My mother feels that since he has a bigger family than she should get to invite more to “make it even”. I plan on talking to fiance about this to see if he can pick certain extended family members to leave off the list, as well as certain friends.
Lastly, I want to use covid as an excuse to not invite so many people. I really want the wedding to be smaller. Are any of you using covid as an excuse to invite fewer people? And if so, are you planning on having an event later to invite those who didn’t go to the wedding so they can feel included? What should I do about my mother and fiance wanting to invite so many “extras”?