For being sad that I didn’t get invited to DH friend’s wedding

But why is it rude? There is no universal definition of "rudeness". This thread alone, shows you that people have differing opinions.

So you invite 25 couples (and get half the number of presents!), or 50 single people. You don't ask 50 people to come without their spouse. It's rude.

I went to a wedding this year where I was actually surprised my husband was invited. I knew the bride well and spent time with the groom but they didn't know my husband that well so we both assumed he wouldn't be invited.

It's fine, it's not personal and just a numbers issue.

Getting hung up about what's expected and what's polite etc is just silly and causes resentment and challenges that don't need to be there.

I think we need to normalize the acceptance that people can make their own choices about their own fucking weddings, parties etc it's madness!

Sick grannies, child free weddings are all perfectly fine.

A very small wedding is also perfectly fine.

Not inviting the wife of an old friend is not ok.

What if you marry later than your friends and they all have spouses and kids and MN gets on your case if you want a child free wedding? What if you need to get married in granny’s village because she’s very frail and can’t travel and there’s only one local hotel with capacity of 100 and that’s booked for two years and granny might die and miss it if you wait that long? What if the groom is more outgoing than the bride and has a much longer friend list - should the bride get to ask friends and spouses but the groom just friends, so it is fair?

Ironically, OP had almost nobody at her wedding, and somehow this seems less controversial to many posters than not inviting a few plus ones.

Any wedding is the couple finding the best compromise and still having the day they want. Surely you see that?

Sigh.

Get a venue that can hold your guest list.

YY @SpiggingBelgium

Somehow everyone only sees the compromise that affects them and not the ones that happened in other areas 😀

It seems as though wedding invitation lists are always going to be "wrong".

On a different day, on a different thread, there would be an OP posting that she had been invited to the wedding of one of her DH's close friends who she didn't know that well, and she didn't really want to go, but didn't know how to get out of it without causing offense.

We picked our venue in part for size and in part for location (very near frail in-laws) - there is always a juggle and honestly, the spouse of a friend wouldn’t come close to the top of the list vs close family needs.

It’s interesting - when you get a wedding thread on MN along the lines of “My son isn’t inviting my dear old aunt, who he hasn’t seen since 2005 but who held him on the day he was born; his grandmother is devastated…”, you'll get a queue of posters criticising the son for prioritising friends, saying “friends come and go but family is forever…”

Yet on a thread like this, where the bride and groom appear to have found a fair, if controversial, way of limiting numbers, that’s wrong too. Don’t invite friends at the expense of family, but by no means exclude the partners of the friends you do invite; never expect anyone to travel or take a day off… There was even a poster on this thread waxing lyrical about how much she disliked her husband’s friend, only to then say how “miffed” she was not to be invited to his wedding! I wonder can brides and grooms ever win…

I also think it is entirely up to the couple to have a wedding for 50 in the venue they love rather than one for 100 in a pub back room, if that’s what would make them happiest.

We picked our venue in part for size and in part for location (very near frail in-laws) - there is always a juggle and honestly, the spouse of a friend wouldn’t come close to the top of the list vs close family needs.

The cost difference between buying a meal for 80 people at a fancy venue or a less fancy venue is not that big. All “hotel weddings” are expensive.

So unless you are booking a room in a pub and bringing plates of quiche (and I have been to lovely weddings like this!) then choosing a venue whose size fits your budget is really the biggest decision. Sure, you can save £100 or £200 here and there on the flowers and cake, but if the venue is charging you £70 per head or whatever, that doesn’t create many more seats at the tables.

Other than inviting work colleagues where I totally understand partners not being invited, I think it's really odd to ask half a married or established couple.

Yes.

He’s not really going alone, he will be there with 4 close friends celebrating the marriage of another close friend.

I do think this is really rude, and I would be upset too op. There’s no way my OH would go without me though - he’d decline the invite and likely tell his friend why (I am guessing, but I know him). It’s up to your DH but I am surprised he would go alone. I do think occasions like weddings should include partners - inviting one and not the other is rude, and just a recipe for resentment. And inviting one to the whole thing and the other to just the evening part is on a whole new level of cheap.

deliberately causing upset and tension in your friends relationships.

So this isn’t about the bride and groom deciding who they want at their wedding, this is a malicious plan on their part to cause their friends some problems?

It’s some effort to go to, planning a wedding and pledging lifelong commitment just for a dastardly plot to stir up trouble. Hats off to them if that’s the case!

I wouldn't be remotely bothered if my husband went to the wedding of someone he was good friends with but I hardly knew. And he wouldn't care if I did likewise.

I think it's a lot more normal these days for couples to have separate friends and not to socialise together or to be friends with each others' friends. Expecting to do everything as a couple feels like a hark back to times when women were not allowed out without their husbands :)

You have repeated the mention of cost cutting, but that wasn’t my point - what is your “other way” to get around venue capacity limitations?

Also, just because I have an opinion on a person’s approach, don’t presume that my approach was the same. It’s entirely possible to argue outside of one’s own experience.

So, question is how close is your DH to them and how close are you? One of DHs best friends did this when they got married - we live hours away from them so I’d only met them a handful of times over the years whereas DH had been friends with the groom since childhood and often saw him without me/friends wife. DH was invited to the wedding but I wasn’t. I did feel a bit put out - DH and I were engaged at the time and had been together for 8 years. But they had restrictions on numbers at their venue and the friend barely knew me and his wife knew me even less. I further understood when we got married and were in the same boat - DHs childhood friend was invited to our wedding but his wife was only invited to the evening do as neither of us knew her well. We were tight on guest numbers and we only invited both parts of a couple if we knew knew both of them very well in their own right saw them as friends, rather than as X’s plus 1. We wanted to know every guest at our wedding personally and very well and know who they were - not look and go “is that X’s girlfriend?”.

Again, there are other ways to cut costs rather than deliberately causing upset and tension in your friends relationships. I just wouldn’t do it. You would, that’s fine.

Yeah this. ^ I would be really upset if my husband went to a wedding without me - when I hadn't been invited - and he would if I did. I would be questioning our marriage tbh. Fact is, neither of us would do this to each other.

And as has been said by a number of posters it is very odd that the OP doesn't know her husband's friends, after 8 years together. Within a month or two of meeting DH/starting to date him, I knew all his friends - male and female, and they became my friends too. Also, within 4-5 months, I was invited to a family wedding (a cousin of his,) and also to several parties of his friends (two 21sts, and an engagement party.) That's how relationships/friendships work surely?

I mean we have our own individual friends who we see separately of course, but if any of our individual friends have anything like a family wedding or a big party (a 50th or 40th etc,) they always invite me us both. I would consider it crass and vulgar and classless to invite someone and not their spouse. (Or long term partner/the person they live with.) Odd behaviour, and very rude IMO.

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Again, it’s often venue capacity that’s the issue. If the venue takes 60, then it takes 60. So you have to make a call between a great aunt and a friend’s plus one.

Everyone will make a different call, and every call will offend someone.

How the bloody hell should I know?! It’s just bad form in my opinion to exclude someone’s partner who you know well, like, and has been with the invited guest for a long time.

I’ve arranged a wedding whilst I was on maternity leave so we were on a tight budget and still managed to invite the partners of our guests. I’d rather cut costs on the flowers or the table decorations or the favours than cause upset and tension amongst the guests and their spouses.

It’s staggeringly rude to send a save the date and then effectively uninvite you!

I have never been to a wedding where plus ones were not invited, I suspect it would be poorly attended.

We would decline as well. I think you should be honest about your feelings with dh.