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Mrs. Bee here.
One of the most common issues brides tell me they face when planning their weddings, is the level of involvement of their parents/in-laws - especially when it comes to the number of guests their parents invite.
Luckily both Mr. Bee and I are friendless 
and have small families, and our parents didn’t live in New York where the wedding was held. So we didn’t have a problem with an overflowing guest list.
What percentage of your guests are your parent’s friends/guests? Do you find that the more your parents are contributing financially, the more say they have in the wedding planning?
My mom begged me to let her have one friend. And in case you guys think I was like, “You can only ask me for ONE person!” It was all her idea. My dad has no friends invited (he has no friends, period, so it’s not my fault :)) And to be honest, I have no friends either! I have five friends invited. FIVE. Mr. Kiwi has all of his friends invited. TONS of friends. I’m such a loser. 
well my parents know that we are paying for the entire wedding so they seem to be very conservative about the invites, but it’s still early.. it’s mostly family though and the rest are our closest friends.
my parents are paying for almost the entire thing, and they are letting us make almost all the major decisions. it really is miraculous — they are even adjusting their guest list (about half the total) if we want to add more people.
I’m in a unique position — HIS parents are footing the entire bill, but this is also b/c his dad is one of 8 siblings and family rules pretty much dictate that all siblings and their kids (so, my FI’s aunts, uncles and cousins) must all be invited. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we’re able to hold an elaborate wedding (and I can invite pretty much anyone I want, b/c even if I invited my postman and others of that ilk FI’s side would still outnumber me 2:1). On the other, my “dream” wedding is about 100 people in an outdoor ceremony — NOT going to happen! So while they’re not using $$$ to control us, their contributions do dictate certain things (in an unsaid way).
i’m having a traditional vietnamese wedding. the list is growing larger and larger by the day, and it looks, at this point, to be upwards of 500 people!!!!
of the 500, i would say about 100 or so will be my FI and my friends.
our family and extended family alone for both sides will be about 120-140.
our parents’ friends will be the rest.
i don’t really mind it too much that the wedding will be so large; the only part i dread is when we go table-to-table to thank our guests. with such a large reception, it would take forever to do it, and i want to enjoy my reception. the reason i don’t mind is b/c the guests will bring us money hahha
as for financially, my FI and i as well as both parents will be contributing. not to mention the money we will be receiving from our guests.
Perhaps we’re just a bit dorky, but most of our parent’s friends that they wanted to invite are “our” friends too? Neither of our parents have crazy social scenes that extend past our knowledge… and everyone they listed we wanted to be a part of our big day since they’d already been big parts of our life!
there was so much drama about this early on in my planning stages, but in the end, my parents are getting their own reception and free reign there (theyre paying) and my fi and I are getting our own reception our way (we’re footing the bill for this part)
i think that if parents are inclined to be bossy, they will be bossy regardless of the fact that they’re only contributing just 10% to your entire wedding budget; it is easi-er to ignore them when you’re paying for everything, but still not as easy to hang up on them as they’re criticizing your choices and laying constant guilt trips on you for not listening to their “wise advice”. 
oh yes, 85% of our guest list are invited by our parents. i am biting my tongue as i speak.
Our parents are paying for the entire wedding but they still feel the guest list and the details are our call. We are inviting his mom’s best friend and my parent’s best friends- so just 3 extra guests from them. The more I read, the more I realize how lucky I am our parents are being so easy.
we are 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3 to the T. that way there are no disagreements over who invited whom…..
36% our guests, 12% my mom’s guests, 2% my dad’s guests, and 50% FIL’s guests.
I was not happy about FIL’s guestlist, to say the least.
My parents are paying for most of the reception, so they felt entitled to hand me a guestlist of 95… even though the max capacity of our venue is only 200-ish. *sigh* I think it will end up being 30% our friends, 30% his parents guests, 40% my parents guests. I guess that is ok…
My parents payed for the majority of our wedding. My inlaws contributed toward the band and bar costs. Each involved party including us had a cap of 75 or so people if we were over the total number of 220 then the person whose list the overage is on has to pay the pp charge. My parents and FI parents both invited a ton of their friends. These are people who have watched me and FI grow up and I would not have thought twice to say no.
My fiance and I are paying for the majority of the wedding. We will have parental help if we need it (hehe), and they are also paying for very specific things.
To be fair (and mostly because we didn’t want to get involved with our parents’ guest lists! :P), we allocated 100 guests for ourselves, and 50 guests for each set of parents. So far, it’s worked beautifully.
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