Hi!
I'm curious how people are going about cutting family members from the guest list due to COVID restrictions. I have a very small entire extended family (~15 people) but grew up incredibly close to (practically raised by) multiple family friends. My fiance's family is quite large (approx 10 aunt/uncles in total + their 10 spouses + 3-4 adult children each +/- their SOs) but he is not very close to them.
We were blessed to have won our wedding, and since finances are now not an issue, I would like to get our guest list as close to 100 people as possible (which is the number of people included in our prize and also the current max with COVID limitations).
We are keeping it fair to both of our families (since neither has had to contribute at all financially) and splitting the guest list 50/50. With regards to inviting his family we have considered the following:
-inviting only aunts and uncles, approx 20 people in total (downside would be that we would rather see the cousins than aunts/uncles!)
-inviting only favorite aunts/uncles/cousins, approx 25-30 people (downside is that we are closer to his dads family and his mom would likely be hurt if we didn't invite her 8 siblings and their families).
-we've already eliminated all children from the wedding. We wouldn't normally do this but due to covid restrictions, is there anyways it's acceptable to have adult cousins not bring their SO? y fiancé hasn't seen most of these cousins in the past decade (can't even name them off)
Does anyone have any other suggestions I haven't thought of? Any preference on which route is the best to take?! I feel like I'm somewhat socially inept coming from such a small family and it's making it even harder to make these determinations.
Relevant sidenote: We are quite close to the aunts/uncles/cousins on his fathers side but not as close to those on his mom's side. His mom's side is large enough that my fiancé can't even name off all of his aunts/uncles, let alone the cousins - most of them he hasn't seen in the past decade.
