Invitation to non consecutive bits of a wedding

The issue for me is that if you are invited formally to the wedding ,usually your effort to dress up, arrive on time, give a gift ,possibly time off work is more /different than if you are invited to the evening do for a bit of a dance and fun. So then not to host the guest afterwards seems off to me. So I think it should be a casual come and see the ceremony if you'd like to and then an invitation to the evening or just evening do. But I would try not to read too much into being a or b list guests , there are tricky decisions to be made based on practicalities. For OPs situation, I think evening guest invitation would be all I would expect.

This ⬆️

Omg just go to the night do.
I've no idea why anyone would consider being faffed around like this.

Brilliant-
We had a small register office do - 12 people.
Went to the pub for a hour.
Then a big party in evening where we did speeches etc.

It’s clearly not recent since at least one poster has said she did it in the 90s.

Doesn’t make it any less rude.

And no, I’m not ‘grateful’ to be asked to make up the numbers for the photos but also asked to hang around the area for 5 or 6 hours and entertain myself while the bride and groom socialise with the people they actually like and can be bothered to provide hospitality to.

I never said it was a recent thing.

Clearly they do. It's not a recent thing. As I said, it's not what we did but many do and I'd choose to be grateful I was invited to parts and not none.

I'd only go to one part (or decline entirely if it wasn't reasonable to travel just for one part).

It's one thing to maybe do this if you're on a budget and having a truly small meal (v close family and bridal party) at a restaurant in between a cheap ceremony and a mid-price reception. And I don't think "evening only" guests are an unreasonable thing either.

But it's super rude to do this. They clearly want to feel special by having a huge crowd at the ceremony and want large numbers to ensure the reception has a party atmosphere but don't actually care about the inconvenience for half those people. That's so rude.

It has become common, but that's not my point. A pp said people are having "champagne celebrations on beer money". Very true. For the SM?
I don't think it's nice to have tiers at weddings, "I want you to come to my wedding, but not all of it, and certainly not the sit down meal part" However, obviously people disagree.

You may think that but it's a very common way of organising a wedding and has been for decades.

It's very usual for there to be more room at the church / evening disco whatever than at the sit down meal.

It's not what we did but it's far from unusual. And as I said, in OPs shoes I think it's nice she was even invited at all.

This is what we did. Ceremony in church so anyone can attend anyway, so we included the details in the invite for evening guests. We were chuffed that loads chose to come. The wedding meal was for less than 30 people and most of the evening guests were local.

This.

See, I think 2/3 isn't a great look. Invite people or don't. None of this hierarchy of friends business.

I think you probably feel you know the person getting married better than they feel they know you. As a friend of their parents/ parent of someone they used to be mates with, you will come much further down the list than family and their own adult friends. It's nice you've been invited to two thirds of it.

I think you are overthinkjng and they don't expect you to feel obliged to be at the ceremony. They are just saying anyone can come to that

This happened to us a couple of years ago for a relative's wedding. Luckily I read the invitation carefully as I don't think DH would have twigged. It was a town an hour or so away from us for the ceremony then reception/ evening do in a village a couple of miles from there. We looked at going for a meal in between but everywhere nice didn't do food in the afternoon! We ended up going home in between which did at least mean we felt refreshed for the evening.
PIL were invited to the whole thing and were angling for us to give them a lift to the reception we weren't invited to! We suggested they found someone else.

If there is significant travel involved and no nice pub/ restaurant for the in between, I would just go to the evening do.

@DappledThings

I think we are in the minority

I mean at the end of the day OP is friends of the parents and not part of the wedding party. My in laws asked if they could invite some old friends (in laws had moved away from where we married). Yes crack on bring them to the evening reception and the in-laws contributed to the evening buffet to cover their guests. Happy days all round.

Oh, the Nice faction have turned up!

This, absolutely.

How very dare you.

Nice biscuits are fabulous!

Along with fruit shortcakes. The biscuit of the gods.

Quite. It was like that in the UK when I was growing up. No different "classes" of friends. Most people weren't well off, they didn't have the disposable income of couples nowadays, so often it was just the ceremony and reception. No evening do. I've been to some lovely weddings which were just that. You'd have a sit down meal and the speeches etc then wave the bride and groom off. No second class event in the evening!

In a similar situation, I just went to the evening do and didn't bother with the non-ceremony ceremony bit which was the first part of the day.

Nobody batted an eyelid particularly as lots of others similarly invited did the same!

Yes, so grabby.

I know, it's just incredible how thoughtless and rude some people are.
However, I suspect it's as pp said it's a "gift grab".