Invitation drama - are we unfair?

Personally I think you should ignore the rules the people lay down and invite who you want. regardless of whether they are married or in an established relationship. When I got married I invited all my girlfriends from school. We still do things as a group and are really close. But I didn't invite a single boyfriend. Not the new boyfriend of only a couple of weeks, nor the boyfriend of two years and the had bought a house together and not even the fiancée. I outlined it from the beginning to my friends and told them that their boyfriends were all welcome in the evening.

It's your wedding, do it YOUR way.

and remember no matter what you will always upset someone.

Yes, I think it is rude not to invite her. Partners come as a two. Sorry.

I invited someone (a close friend) without her partner for the ceremony and explained he was welcome in the evening. She said she couldn't spend a couple of hours apart from him as it was the start of their Christmas holidays (!) so neither of them came for the ceremony/wedding breakfast. Saved me twice the money.

She was the only one who had a problem with it though. Several people came without husbands, even one where I both my husband and I had been invited to her wedding. She knew we were on a budget and had no issues being an individual, rather than someone who can't have fun unless their husband is there.

I say just back of from the conversations about it once you have made it clear it is not changing. I do think your 'rules' about which plus 1s get to come may have complicated things though.

Ooh, this is definitely an interesting one. We decided that we needed to invite all partners, especially as most of the people coming to the wedding are family, and all guests will be travelling, it didn't feel right to invite anyone on their own. My brother then got a new girlfriend, but by that point we had run out of space. We apologised and said we would invite her to the evening do, but he has since split up with her anyway! Anyone we have invited to the evening has also got a plus one, because we know that people are more comfortable with their other halves, and again it involves travelling. We did do a lot of thinking though, because it obviously means you are spending more, and can invite less people. In the end though we decided it was nicer for people to come with other halves, but I can totally understand why you would end up choosing to go the other way

^^This. Some plus 1's are invited. Some aren't invited because you don't know them (fair enough). Here you do know her but not well enough to justify an invite (getting a bit confusing but still understandable) But I got completely lost at the bit where some single people have been given the option to bring along complete strangers as long as they don't know anyone else at the wedding. So because the guy does know some people at the wedding (just not many by the sound of it) he isn't allowed a plus one. If he knew less people at the wedding she would be invited. So, I understand why she is confused as to why she is not invited. Because it is confusing.

We are incredibly tight on numbers and therefore when deciding who to invite we factored in plus ones and trimmed our guest list accordingly. ALL plus ones are invited. That was our choice and this is yours. Not everyone is going to agree with your decision about plus ones. You have a right to invite who you want to your wedding but equally she has a right to be upset about something she is clearly taking personally. If there was a blanket 'no plus ones' you might have found she took it less personally. Also,if all the single people have declined their plus ones is there not now space? If there would have been but instead of allowing plus ones of existing guests you have invited other people (with or without plus ones) it does seem to make it more personal about her.

Sorry, I completely disagree that if you invite someone you have to invite their partner. I am perfectly capable of having a good time without my OH. If someone I barely spoke to invited my OH to a function (wedding, baby shower, work do, birthday party - whatever), I certainly wouldn't feel that they didn't respect my relationship, and I wouldn't feel offended. There's no logical reason for them to invite me other than that I'm dating OH, and as we aren't physically joined at the hip, actually that isn't a logical reason for them to invite me either. On the contrary, I actually thought it was kinda weird when OH's colleagues invited me on a work's do the other week (turns out they wanted to meet me because he talks about me a lot, but I was still "why am I going again?").

OH gets invites and goes to functions where I'm not invited, and I get invites and go to functions where OH isn't invited. So what?

Before we decided on our decision, we did some searching on the internet and many say it's only etiquette to invite partners who are married, engaged or living together,

They are none of the above so it doesn't go against any etiquette by us not inviting the girlfriend. He's been changing girlfriends every 6-12 months so we factored this in. We never know who he'll be with.

@cinnamon009:

We asked the single guests about plus ones before we amended the guest list. This way we knew that we would not have to remove 2 people from the guest list.

The boyfriend also knows all our friends at the wedding and will be sitting with them and also knows of some of our family members.

We are allowing guests who know no one simply because they may find it awkward being the only people at the wedding who doesn't know anyone.

I don't mean to sound awful but reading between the lines I think u just don't want to invite this girl to your wedding. If it was non plus ones then I would understand but to single certain ones out I think it's unfair. From the sounds of it he is s close friend and has been with this girl for a year and a half. If I heard I wasn't invited to a wedding with my oh but other guests had plus ones I would be a bit upset.

Obviously it's your wedding u can invite who u want but if this guy is a close friend I would respect his choice in partner and invite her to save this kind of drama. Or at least invite her to the night do.

X

I don't mean to sound awful but reading between the lines I think u just don't want to invite this girl to your wedding. If it was non plus ones then I would understand but to single certain ones out I think it's unfair. From the sounds of it he is s close friend and has been with this girl for a year and a half. If I heard I wasn't invited to a wedding with my oh but other guests had plus ones I would be a bit upset.

Obviously it's your wedding u can invite who u want but if this guy is a close friend I would respect his choice in partner and invite her to save this kind of drama. Or at least invite her to the night do.

X

I don't mean to sound awful but reading between the lines I think u just don't want to invite this girl to your wedding. If it was non plus ones then I would understand but to single certain ones out I think it's unfair. From the sounds of it he is s close friend and has been with this girl for a year and a half. If I heard I wasn't invited to a wedding with my oh but other guests had plus ones I would be a bit upset.

Obviously it's your wedding u can invite who u want but if this guy is a close friend I would respect his choice in partner and invite her to save this kind of drama. Or at least invite her to the night do.

X

He hasn't been with her for year and half. He's been with her for around half year and they were dating other people at the same time at the beginning of their relationship.

^this. I totally agree - I have never expected my OH to be invited to any weddings or events that I am invited to & nor have I expected to to be invited to his. Ideally, I would invite partners if I could but if I didn't know them I wouldn't lose any sleep about not inviting them. But then I don't want to share such a personal day with someone I don't know. Each to their own, I guess.

when I was first planning my wedding it was supposed to be small gathering and I'd said to my 3 best friends/bridesmaids that I provably wouldn't invite their husbands (who I also know very well). They were fine with it because they understand what it's like. I did invite them all in the end.

Our rule in the end once our wedding list became much bigger was

if they are married they both come

if they have children together. They both come

if they live together they both come

one of grooms friends text to ask if his partner was invited, this was after the invite had gone out and rsvp back with just his name on it. We didn't even know her name, so no she was definitely not invited!

You our invite who you want to, ignore her she'll get over it and if she doesn't well you didn't even know her that much anyway!

Did you say that you had given single friends plus ones?

I went to 2 weddings in the last few years on my own, I didn't know anyone but I didn't care that's what weddings are about....making new friends! I had a great time!!

i think if my oh got invited to a friends wedding and I didn't I'd only be a annoyed if everyone else's partners had been invited but just not be! We have been together 6 years, soon to be married and have a 4 year old though!

But if it was a small wedding and lots of partners hadn't been invited I don't think it would bother me at all. Especially after planning my own wedding!

I don't agree that you have to invite partners and I think she has gone the wrong way about getting an invite. However, she is one of your best friends girlfriend, who you knew at school! I think I'd be upset if I were the girlfriend. If they seem a solid enough couple and you grew up with her I don't understand why you wouldn't invite her.