Who to Invite?

So this is where I am at right now. We have decided that we think we want to have a traditional wedding in our hometown, and by we I mean I because my fiance doesn't really care where we get married at as long as we get married. Which is nice that I get to make a lot of the decisions but I am a very indecisive person so it is very hard for me. I want to do whatever will save us the most money but I really want my friends and most of my family to be there. To decide how expensive your traditional wedding could potentially cost in my opinion a good estimator of that would be to decide and figure out who exactly you want to be at your wedding. Personally, we have decided to keep it as small as possible but to include all the people we really want to be there. I come from a really big extended family, my dad has 12 brothers and sisters and my mom has 3. My fiance's family isn't as big, his mom is an only child and his dad has 2 sisters. However to try and save costs and to only include the people we really want there we have decided to only invite our parents siblings and their spouses and to include just a couple of our cousins. That way it will leave room for inviting our friends and some of our friends parents who have really been a part of our lives throughout high school and college and even longer who will really enjoy being a part of our big day. This is what we have decided to do though so whatever works best for you and allow you to save money might not work for everyone. I know some people might not agree with not inviting all of our extended families, especially since we would rather have other people there that really know us and know our story and how much this day will mean to us. We have really struggled with who to invite and this has been a really difficult decisions but we also thought that we could do our invitations in waves that way if someone couldn't come then we could always send out an invitation to someone else and give them a chance to come. If you have any other ideas please feel free to share them! =)