To scrap ‘evening’ invitations to weddings

All our guests were equally important to us and invited to the full wedding celebrations.

Yes we chose a venue which was a blank canvas. So we bought all the booze from majestic (on sale and return) and drinks were free. I was more comfortable doing it this way than inviting more people to a venue with a paid bar just for the evening.

I love the way they do it in Europe - start a bit later and no separate evening do.

Ive heard horror stories of evening guests showing up and the speeches and dinner are still going on. They are just waiting outside to be let in! Probably to an expensive bar. Not what I would want at all.

At Both my daughter’s weddings. We arranged the weddings for late afternoon, which went on till the evening. I really think it’s better to invite just a few more guests to the actual wedding!
I wouldn’t dream of saying to family or friends, you can just come to the evening do!

We were invited to an evening do. A few years ago! It cost us a lot of money to stay in a city hotel as well as the travelling expenses and wedding gift. We are asked to attend the ceremony, which took place at 12 o clock but not the rest of the wedding, until the evening! At the evening do, there was no food, no entertainment, nothing, we didn’t even get a piece of wedding cake, and drinks were expensive!

I agree. They almost always involve a bridezilla who is asking more than should be expected of the guest in the context of the wedding (whether that is emotional investment or money) or an exclusion that would also be hurtful if there were no invite at all.

We got married in a tiny registry office (the only option for us in those days) around 12 present for that. We had photos canapés and champagne immediately afterwards and then had another 90 for a full traditional reception starting at 6ish and going on until very late. We avoided having to think about evening party this way. There were a very few people such as one guests very new girlfriend and my mother’s hairdresser who we said would be very welcome to drink and dance later on and they were very pleased to be asked. I’d refuse an evening invite if it was a very long way away and not possible to turn into a short break but in general I don’t care and am just happy to join in with the special day in any way I can.

I’m also from a European country where evening only wedding invites are not a thing. People generally invite 50-150ish people for a whole day celebration which starts with wedding ceremony in the afternoon, followed by dinner and party.

It is but not as bad as you might think because we choose to marry elsewhere . We have around 100 guests.
we have a drinking package wines beer and sangria all day and then any spirits on top of that after dinner .

That makes the whole day even more expensive feeding 150 instead of say 40 twice for example.

That sounds very expensive!
A round of drinks for a family of four is going to be £20 easy bar prices, no?
You could easily spend £100 per adult on drinks....for 50 people that's £5000

Unless it's not an open bar and people are limited to a drinks package?

It's all about how many friends you have.
We only have a handful of close friends....but a large number of intermediate friends. More than acquaintances, and would be rude to leave them out but no we could not have afforded a sit down meal and free bar for all of them.

No , not what I see in the wedding posts on MN . Most people will have one meal only , most won’t invite children , most will not have an open bar either .
But just like you when I planned it I assumed it was the norm so maybe we both have the same preconceived ideas .

Well, congratulations, but isn’t it pretty standard to get married in the afternoon, and party on until everyone drops? (It can be a looong day, which is why a pp has a point about a fresh influx peoole peoole showing up at about 7.30 often bringing a new surge of energy to a flagging reception.)

I'd rather go to part of a friend's wedding than none of it. But I think everyone should be invited to the ceremony unless it's actually impossible to fit them all in! Not inviting many people to the meal - which is a very expensive part - is fine with me.

I don’t get it either , we are getting married soon and there are only main invites ,but we are doing it every different it seems , we are getting married in the afternoon and party will last until 2 am . We also don’t expect people to pay for drinks either all meals and drinks are included and we invited full families so children are included .

We got married at our local church then due to capacity for a large family plus friends, the reception was 30 mins away. With family and many closest friends not being local, a DIY village hall type reception wasn't viable. We had evening invitations for neighbours and work colleagues, and phrased it as "you're welcome to join us at the church". Some took one option, some the other. I wouldn't have done that for a single venue event. They were near to home so flexible to pick a combination (or decline) to what suited them.

Where it's local and a wider circle of friendship that wouldn't presume a full day invitation, evening invitations have their place. If capacity is limited and whole groups are invited to the evening and that's made clear at the planning stage, that's also fine.

What isn't fine is expecting people to travel significant distances for an evening, hyping people for a year or two of planning as though they'll be invited to the whole day then springing the evening invitation at the last moment, splitting close groups or split invitations at a single venue in the middle of nowhere where there's nothing to do for a few hours.

Generally evening invitation AIBUs tend to be where someone's had a year or two of listening to planning hype, possibly spent £££ on a hen weekend and then found out with a couple of months to go that some of the friendship group have full invitations, and they haven't when they'd spent years believing that they were all mutually close.

I got married 6 years ago. All our family and some close friends came to the whole day. About 80 in total. I had a group of playgroup friends who I had only met in the past year who I invited to the night do And I invited my work colleagues who I like but not close friends. They all came and it was lovely to have them.

It's fine to do evening invites no different to being invited to a 50th etc but equally not to expect everyone to want to attend.

That sounds thoughtless, but would it have been better if you hadn’t been invited at all?

Well no, you were invited to the evening party from 1930.

That's when you were 'expected' if you'd accepted the invitation.

You were told that you were welcome at the ceremony if you wished to attend since it was open to the public. You weren't actually expected there and could have gone anyway.

It's you who made this about being inferior etc and chose to make a whole day of an evening invitation.

Why not, though, unless you think of weddings as a carefully-curated party for your inner circle? I mean, I don’t think there are many ‘shoulds’ at weddings, other than ‘Don’t have bride and groom thrones’ or ‘Don’t wear stilettos to an outdoor wedding”.

Anyone can attend a church wedding, so I would guess that there us a long tradition of involving the wider community. Sit down meals and speeches are a more recent convention.

Obviously you should have the wedding you want, but it should be easy to see that different people have different kinds of social circles and different budgets and different ways of celebrating.

I think there can be a place for them for people who live close and would come in a large group (work colleagues, sports teams, neighbours etc)

I guess my view is that if you don’t know the couple well then you shouldn’t really be at their wedding.

I do think inviting loads of work friends (unless genuine friends) and people you barely know is ridiculous. I’d rather focus my time and money on spending the day with family and good friends.

I do think that unless you are having a ‘local’ wedding, ie you live/work/socialise in the area where you are holding your wedding reception, then the social pressure to have an evening do (and to accept invitations to attend) is really outdated. Anyone used to be able to go to the church part and could then go home and come to the party later because it was in the village/town where everyone lived.

But now that brides often live a long way from their families (who used to ‘host’) and posh venues are continually used instead, I think clinging on to the obligation to open up the evening event to everyone you know is just an anachronism fuelled by the wedding industry who are in it to make money. Either invite them to the whole day or keep it small and intimate.

We were then expected to lose ourselves from 3pm until 7.30pm when our inferior selves could have the honour of attending an evening party

This sort of thing is awful and definitely does give evening invitations a bad name…..

It depends.
We have a relative who told us we're weren't important enough to her to invite us to the main wedding reception die to cost but we were welcome to attend the church. So DH was expected to tail up, to travel into central London. We were then expected to lose ourselves from 3pm until 7.30pm when our inferior selves could have the honour of attending an evening party. Meanwhile we'd have been paying the babysitter for the privilege of not being invited to the main reception.

The rudest bit was that MIL was expected to attend the wedding alone, including hundreds of miles of travel. It was at the same church as her own wedding, the first family event since her husband of more than 45 years had dropped dead and there was no thought for her situation.

If there are people as thoughtless as that particular relative then I think the practice should cease.

Totally one for those getting married, nobody else. No friends input, no family input.