Guest list question

tacosandtums · April 2014

My mom asked me to provide some names for invites for a baby shower. Do I send an invitation to be polite to out of town family members, such as aunts and cousins, (who live a plane trip away, not an hour drive or anything) and risk looking tacky like I'm just "alerting them to send a gift", or do I just not send an invitation at all??

VOR · April 2014

Remember - this isn't a wedding. It's not the same kind of event. Showers are meant to be smaller, more personal events. Not "invite everyone you know" events. So, by and large, no. Don't invite oot people.

BUT - if you know there is "that aunt" who will be offended not to be invited, invite them.

ccam · April 2014

In our family, all of the ladies receive an invite even if we assume they won't make the trip for a shower. There have been a few times we were surprised and out of state family were going to be around or made the trip for a shower/party. That being said, I think it depends on the family.

Helenahhandbasket · April 2014

If it's a close-ish family member (aunt, cousin) I would send an invite to be polite. Second cousin twice removed? No.

Chances are, if they are family, they would have sent a gift anyway.

SingleMom31 · April 2014

I think that it depends on the people:

I have a lot of friends from college that live on the east coast (I'm in the midwest) and I didn't invite them -- I knew they wouldn't make the trip and wouldn't be offended by the lack of an invitation. Likewise, I didn't invite my extended family that I only see once in a blue moon.

But, my MIL is 8 hours away - I felt like she needed to be invited as the grandma, even if she couldn't come. Also, my mom also has one sister who had just been admitted to hospice at the time of the shower, but otherwise would have come -- My mom wanted to send her an invitation, so I included her on the list that I gave my BFF who was hosting the shower.

sschwege · April 2014

There is no concrete rule about this, it's more about knowing your guests. Overall I would say don't invite out of town guests, but do this on a case-by-case basis. I didn't want to invite OOT guests, but my mother wanted all of her sisters invited, so I figured she knew them better than I did and agreed. One of the Aunts did fly in for it, the other 3 OOT Aunts did not, so you never know. As for cousins, I figured that was more my department and chose not to invite OOT ones. But then I have a close friend who flies in every summer to visit her family and I did invite her because I figured she would probably plan it around my shower and she did.

I guess what I'm saying is, you can answer this question better than we can. Put some thought into what you think they would want and I'm sure if you are sincere in whatever you choose to do it will not come off the wrong way.

divinemsbee · April 2014

I'm also on the it depends train. My mom is the only one of her immediate family that lives outside of their tiny town, so she's invited to most of my cousins' showers even though she's not going to fly in. I invited H's grandmother who lives in Idaho to my wedding shower even though I knew she wasn't coming to the wedding because she's his grandmother and I wanted her to feel included. She thought it was sweet.

If it were me, my mom would have a good idea of which of her and my dad's family needed to be invited, so I'd ask her what she thought. Other than that, the only OOT people would be very close friends and some of H's family.

Honestly, I do think as PP said that it's important to remember it's not a wedding. H and I invited a little over 300 people to our wedding. For my bridal shower my MOH sent less than 30 invitations and I had 10ish attendees and it was lovely. I realize bridal showers sometimes are larger, but I definitely see baby showers and a nearest and dearest thing. People who want to send gifts can and will do so without a shower invitation, and if they want info on registries and such they'll know who to ask.

tacosandtums · April 2014

Thanks everyone for your input. In my case it's just two aunts and a cousin who live in Florida. I think I will include them on the guest list so they receive an invitation so they know if they happen to be in town, they're welcome to come!

ETA: wording

sschwege · April 2014

RC1014 said:

Thanks everyone for your input. In my case it's just two aunts and a cousin who live in Florida. I think I will include them on the guest list so they receive an invitation so they know if they happen to be in town, they're welcome to come!

ETA: wording

I think that's the way I would do it too.

MMason12 · April 2014

ccam said:

In our family, all of the ladies receive an invite even if we assume they won't make the trip for a shower. There have been a few times we were surprised and out of state family were going to be around or made the trip for a shower/party. That being said, I think it depends on the family.

This is the same way for my family. If we left someone out because we assumed they wouldn't come $hit would hit the fan, lol.

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