Wedding invitation… who is being unreasonable?

Exactly - I live in the lakes which is a popular wedding "destination" but a lot of the hotels where people have weddings aren't exactly in the middle of a busy city. Additionally the few towns in the vicinity are tiny places with maybe a few gift shops and a cafe, not somewhere you can really amuse yourself for hours on end (especially out of high tourist season) as most people come to the lakes to hike/walk not mooch about town for the day.

Add to that that everything closes around 4/5pm and the stepmum is potentially going to be sitting in a car for a couple of hours if the evening do doesn't start until 7pm. Not only that but the step mum also has to either wear something that is appropriate both to "wander round town" for a few hours and also wear to the wedding (and I don't have anything in my wardrobe that is comfortable and casual enough for a day wandering round town but dressy enough for a wedding) or find somewhere to change, unless they're staying over in a hotel (which is another expense). And if they aren't staying over then it will be the stepmum who will invariably be the one who is expected to not drink so she can drive home, so after a day wandering town alone she can't even enjoy a drink in the evening.

All of which is a long winded way of saying if I was part of a couple where one person was only invited to the evening in a place where we had to travel 2+hrs to attend then neither of us would be going due to the logistics.

Save the date cards are not meant for every guest, they are meant for the most important guests that the bride and groom do not want to have their big day without. It's not meant as a "pre invite" invite, it's meant as a "We do not want to have the day without you and even though we have no other details yet this is the date we have booked so please keep it free for our wedding".

The idea is a small group of important guests (family, wedding party, best friends etc) get a Save the Date as soon as the wedding is booked to ensure they can attend, even if the wedding itself isn't till the following year. Any other guests get the standard wedding invite once everything has been booked and confirmed and if someone can't make it then the B&G will be disappointed but get on with their day.

Can they reject the day invite and just accept the evening

Great minds, Nanny0gg.

It's all very well saying "stepmum can amuse herself in town" but not all towns are chock-full of amenities, and especially not in the evening. Most evening receptions don't start until 7pm at the earliest and IME the kind of independent shops and small cafes/coffee shops that are worth exploring (and often the high street chains too in many towns) close no later than 5pm. There's a small, fairly rural town not too far from me which is a very popular wedding venue because it has a picturesque church and park and one hotel with nice gardens / a decent function room, but it's a ghost town after 4.30pm - no late night shopping, no coffee shops open into the evening, just a betting shop, a couple of takeaways and a Co-op. And I know it's far from unique.

Excluded from the wedding breakfast though...

Sorry, I don't wear wedding or party outfits to go shopping or to lunch.

And as the Evening 'do' doesn't usually start till 7pm what is she supposed to do after the shops shut (assuming the wedding isn't in the arse-end of nowhere as they often are now they're 'venues')? Sit in the pub till she's picked up?

Etiquette and care for your guests has gone out of the window these days.
If you can't afford to do the proper thing then cut your cloth and all that.

I can understand adults only invites, but inviting only one half of a couple is really bad mannered. Don't invite both of them in that case. So they want people to travel a distance and do what while one half is invited. Rude.

It's bad etiquette to invite one half of a couple for part of an event and expect the other half to hang around all day, travel separately or have the first invitee need to drive to the event and leave just to drive back with the half invited partner.

If it were me I would simply decline all invites. Inviting half of a couple is bad enough when they're local with little travel involved. Who wants to attend an event on their own?

Yeah as others have said this is weird. Long term partners should be invited together, both all day or both reception only.
If I was invited to the evening while my husband was invited all day, I’d tell him to go if he wanted to go and I’d decline. Although it sounds like they might be hoping for that!

Yes you can invite whoever you like to your wedding but splitting invites and inviting couples to different parts of the day is incredibly rude, we would just decline the invite 🤷

Personally I think it's a bit ridiculous to invite one partner to the whole thing and the other to the evening only if they have to travel

I think it's rude but I wouldn't have asked them. If it was me I'd have simply RSVP'd saying we'd both only be going to the evening. If they came back and asked why I'd tell them its 2 hours away and we are travelling together, and don't want to leave DH in a random place all dressed up in his suit to hang aimlessly for several hours. If they get pissy and say they want you there, you say I'm sorry but I don't have suitable transport arrangements to facilitate us attending seperately. Still pissy, then I'd just outright decline.

It's incredibly rude to only invite one half of a couple. It's becoming increasingly common but it is really bad manners.
I refused to go to my cousin's wedding because they didn't invite my fiance. It's just so rude.

The invitation is really rude.

Worse as they are travelling.

Yeah, I think it's pretty rude. And I don't get their logic in excluding you from the ceremony.

If it's a church wedding, anyone can go to it - that's the whole point - it's a public declaration of a two people forming a legally sanctioned & legally binding relationship.

I’ll stick my head above the parapet and say I think it’s rude to separate couples at a single event like this. But manners and weddings seem to have parted company years ago!! That said, Dh & I would just decline the invite rather than call them.

I had a COVID wedding and had a strictly "no plus 1s" because I was limited to 30 people and I didn't know 90% of the +1s. I still had family members kicking off because their kids couldn't bring girlfriends I had never met (who they have now broken up with). I think even if it isn't a COVID wedding, it is 100% the b&g's decision who can come and when. If you're not paying for the wedding, you have no say on how it is organised or who is invited, end of.

I hated being split up as a couple when we were young and had not long been in a serious relationship, (but lived together, very much in the love's young dream phase) when DH was best man and we were both there all day but he had to sit on another table so we were split up for a lot of the day. It was a bit thoughtless of the bride and groom I thought as I would know no-one else there. And as I was young and pretty then several single guys there were hitting on me as it appeared as if I was single. Plus DH had to go to the rehearsal the day before and we also went to a family dinner the night before so hardly had any time alone. It was a lovely wedding in all but much better when I could finally sit with DH and have a dance and actually spend some time together.

I wouldn't care now if I had to sit apart from DH, I am far more confident and chatty, and I would hardly be fighting the men off, but I still think it's a bad idea to split couples up, but particularly unfair when one of them doesn't know anyone and they are really loved up and hate being apart.

Given it's a 2hr journey away the couple would travel together it does seem not right

Saying that it's the b&g decision and partners are always possible in numbers and money and space

I take it you won't be going at grandad 80th

I no longer attend weddings if one of us is invited all day and the other is only invited in the evening. It’s never convenient for us so we don’t go.

It’s their choice to choose who they invite (but it’s rude) and it’s my choice to decline (I’m not rude).

I think what they have done is poor form and could obviously cause offence. Particularly as it's a second wife situation, it makes it look like she's second best. It wouldn't bother me too much either way as a guest - I'd be happy to potter round an unfamiliar town on my own or chill out, read a book and have a glass of wine - though I would never ever issue invitations myself on that basis.

If the couple had skipped the save the date cards and postage expense they might have been able to afford to invite all of you!

I think it’s very rude to only invite one half of a couple to a wedding.

I agree, I've genuinely never encountered this in real life. Imo if you can't afford to invite both people, then you're trying to have a wedding that's bigger/more expensive than you can afford 🤷‍♀️ and I say this as someone who had an extremely small wedding budget.

I also think it's daft when people say the bride and groom have the right to do what they want... well yes, there's no law against bad manners. Of course they can decide to forgo etiquette expectations if they like, but that doesn't make it any less rude!

Yes but this is different, if you got all the way out there and your husband was only invited to the evening do. It's a bit of a strange thing to do really. Either invite both to the whole thing, or just the one half you really want there.