Telling someone they're not invited when they ask.

This response may sound fair yet not rude. "We are full and have no space".

Another way to get out of the question is let them know you put their names only.

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That's perfect! I always took the approach of "we wish we could have invited everyone" and then mention something about limited venue capacity or budget!

One of the tougher things to do. Got asked by my uncle to include his kids. Just said about limited space and depends on rsvps. Got suckered into one invite since its my future brother in laws girlfriend. I honestly prefer she didn't come but stuck with this one.

Glad this discussion popped up in my feed! Someone just asked me the other day and I just said “we haven’t picked the guest list yet” even though we have and she was a “DO NOT INVITE” person.

Thanks ladies for helping out with this! I told her that we will be paying for the wedding ourselves and although we would love to invite everyone we are not wanting to start off our marriage in debt because of this.

I've had a few people try to know if they were invited (they weren't), although no one asked directly.

So far, I've stuck with the truth: we both have big families, and just our families already make up more people than I initially wanted. I want to keep the wedding smallish because we're both introverts and I know that having too much people there will just tire us, and I want to stay in a reasonable budget.

I also tell them that they're welcome to come to the ceremony, since we're not paying per head there (I'm not telling that) although I don't expect many of them to come since it's 4 hours away.

I had the same thing happen, I just said we are having a intimate wedding, the venue we chose is very expensive so we are keeping are guest list low as we have a limited budget. And that we would have loved to invite everyone. Most people understand, some don't, but at the end of the day its your wedding day! Let them know and keep on planning .

I would take Ashley's advice but you could also say that due to your budget you are not able to invite everyone you want to the wedding. You could also say that you are more than happy for them to join for the reception (the person gets to feel involved in your day and you don't have to pay for them).

Definitely just stick with something like Ashley said. Family only or private or intimate. Most people will be understanding, even if they are a little hurt.

So awkward! I would say that you are keeping the wedding ceremony very intimate, it's mostly family. So sorry. Wish we could invite everyone.

The same thing happened to me, an old friend that I lost touch with 5 years ago, popped up out of no where and sent me a message asking when we were sending out invitations. I replied with, "In February" and I left it at that. At that point, we hadn't started the guest list. We quickly decided later that day, he's not invited since he hasn't been present in our lives in past 5 years. We have only crossed paths with him once. It's funny how clueless some people can be....