I hear you loud and clear. We live far away from our families so
didn't have to deal with this, but my family is large, and showers (or
parties of any sort) quickly get out of hand. People who are not from
big families often just don't *get* it (I have 60 first cousins on my
dad's side alone, and as many of them are already grandparents,
multiple layers of other cousins as well).

wow, that is pretty impressive, if I'm understanding who exactly you
mean by first cousins on your fathers side - i.e. your father's
siblings' children, then that's of the order of your father having 8
siblings and each of them having 8 children, I don't find someone having
8 siblings at all surprising, just the fact that then all of them also
had such big families, or if any of them had smaller families, the
others having even bigger ones to make up, which does seem a lot more
unusual. My dad's mum was the youngest of 7, so only 6 siblings, but I
think he has only around 15 first cousins, 2 of the siblings didn't get
married, the others had more middle sized families.

I'm at the opposite extreme, it's not the smallest family in the world,
but before I married, my entire family including me, extending as far as
first cousins was 12 people. My parents and the two of us, my mum's
sister, husband and 2 children, my dad's sister and 3 our of 4
grandparents still living.

In some ways I'm envious of larger families, if it's bigger there seems
to be more chance of being close, or living near family members, but
I've noticed it doesn't always work out like that - as my family is
small, it's not an onerous task to keep in touch with everyone and to
send cards and gifts, net result is that we are close, whereas in a big
family you couldn't do that so easily and end up not close to anyone -
DH's family is more medium sized compared to mine, yet at his birthday,
he get's more cards from my family than his. It can be a cause of
tension, because he's not close to his family, I've spent barely any
time with them, so I've never had the chance to get comfortable with
them, so he then feels I don't want to see them, rather than seeing that
I'm just uncomfortable and find it more stressful than he does to see my
family members.

Cheers
Anne