Not inviting other halves you don't personally know - etiquette question

Just commenting on this to bump it up, as we were in the same situation. The problem for us was that we live in Manchester and having wedding in Belfast so we couldnt really invite others halves to the evening do, as they would be travelling all the way over, and left for the day, just for a few hours.

My recommendation here would be just say its due to numbers / budget and your having a close friends and family reception only - but then invite other halves to the evening do. I think thats very fair as i am sure they wouldnt want to see u get married if they have never met u - but they are still included in the celebrations.

xx

It wouldn't really work that way round because the entire thing is pretty much an evening do. We're not getting married 'til 3:30pm so by the time we're ready for the main meal, it'll be at least 5:30 anyway. Most people will be travelling in to Milton Keynes from London, Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester etc so it's not really feasible for their OHs to travel down later on purely for the evening music/dancing thing from about 8:30.

It's an all or nothing thing I'm afraid!

Hmmm tough one... the way I would work it then, and the way we did it, it now 'serious' the other halves are, if they have only been dating a few weeks, dont invite them, but if they have been for a few months u might just have to take the plunge and invite them. The way we looked at it was that even if we havent met them, if they are in a serious relationship they are going to be a part of our friends life, and ours in the future, so its building on future relationships inviting them and also a chance to get to know them better.

Can u skimp on other things and not the guest list?

Have you talked to your friends and gauged their reactions to it?

Good luck! x

We've already cut back everywhere we possibly can. The vast majority of our budget is going into the venue and catering already and we've worked out that 100 guests max is what we can afford. The venue has strict minimum and maximum numbers anyway so there's not a huge room for manoeuvre.

I have 4 friends with long-ish term partners who I've never met, and df has 3 the same. If we invite the partners, we have to leave out 7 of our other actual friends or we're over our 100 mark, and at £70ish per head, it's a big thing to swallow and just invite them anyway!

My h2b received an invite recently that did not include me. Their wedding was small and they were in a budget. No explanation was given. I moaned s bit bug at thd end of the day it was their day and my h2b went to his friends wedding. We've invited both of them to ours. People may moan and some people will take umbrage. But do what you need to so you don't bankrupt yourself inviti g people you don't know. X

Wouldn't inviting them to your wedding be a good way to get to know them?

Honestly, if I was invited to a wedding and my finance wasn't, I wouldn't go either. Perhaps you could divide them up by whether or not they live together or something like that? I don't know many of my friends other halves but they're 'couples' and I wouldn't expect them to come to my wedding alone.

Having said that it's YOUR wedding, don't be afraid to offend people to do what YOU want to do ?

x

Hey,

All our close friens are like us been 2gether for ever and have kids so dont have that problem with them, but as for our siblings who range from 18 to 24 we have said their other half can come only if its a serious relationship, maybe 6 months or over, I wouldnt like 2 meet people for the first time on my wedding day, so if they were serious relationships im sure you should have met all the applying people already. I hope that makes sense!!!

Sxx

We invited all plus ones who were living together or engaged or married (even if we had never met the other half). Everyone else we invited in their own right, so we did invite some ppl who's other halves were also invited, but they got seperate invites IYSWIM.

We are in the same boat that our wedding is far away from most of our friends so we had no option to add them in the evening.

We've narrowed it down by including the ones who are married/engaged/living together/have kids (we know all our friends' kids anyway and they're invited so it *would* be daft not to invite one parent!). These 7 who are leftover are the 'been dating for ages but not moved in together' types.

H2b got an invite to a friend's wedding last year and I wasn't invited. He didn't go in the end because it clashed with plans we'd already made, but it didn't seem weird for me not to be invited because at that point I hadn't met the couple who were getting married. I was invited to h2b's cousin's wedding a few years before and that WAS a bit awkward because we'd only been dating a few months and I didn't know his family very well, never met the couple before etc.

I think I'm going to have to put feelers out there, talk to the friends in question and see how it's likely to go down if I invite them but not their partners.

If you do decide to invite them, why dont you suggest meeting up so you know who they are before the day??

I think it would be nicer on the day to know everyone there

We worked on a slightly different basis - if we knew both, both got an invite. The only +1s were those who otherwise wouldn't know anyone (I wouldn't go to a wedding if I was going to be billy no mates but would if OH was invited). The vast majority of the evening invites got +1s but during the day it mostly family or groups of friends who've all known each other for ages so I didn't see the need to invite OHs to escort them.

Everyone lives quite far away, all over the country in fact! We don't really get to catch up with these friends other than on facebook and the occasional wedding or big birthday bash because of work commitments and pure distance

Don't forget not everyone you invite will be able to come! Have you sent any save the dates & got some idea of attendance? I would say if you are 7 over you are more than likely to have 7 people not able to come.

No we're sending out our STDs this week once our website is up and running (the URL is printed on the STD cards so wanted to wait 'til it was all live). I didn't want to cause any confusion or upset though by being any kind of misleading with the STDs. I've asked one friend about not inviting her boyfriend and she's asked if we CAN make room for him cos she doesn't know the area and will struggle to afford a hotel room by herself.

I personally think if people have been together for more than 6 months and/or are living together you should invite both, even if you don't know the OH, particularly if they are due to travel/likely to spend a night away. Is there another way you can cut costs? Cheaper booze etc?

wss. we invited a few people's OH's even though we hadn't met them as they were travelling so far - it would have been quite unreasonable not to invite them.

look at it this way - in 5 years people will not remember which favours you had, or which flowers you had as the centrepieces, or whether their first drink was prosecco or real champagne - they *will* remember that you didn't invite the person closest to them.

Mmm its a tough one. we've gone for if we havent met the oh and they havent been together for very long they are not invited. But to be honest most of our friends have been with their oh for quite a while. We are however not inviting children as this pushed the budget and numbers up alot and I wanted to have my close friends there, if we had invited peoples children we wouldnt have been able to have our close friends.