Different wedding invites for bridesmaids partner

It’s rude, plain and simple. If you’re a good enough friend to be a bridesmaid, he should get an invitation.

If you are a good enough friend to be a bridesmaid, then you should be a good enough friend to introduce them to your partner. If not, why not? Who is not good enough here?

i Wouldn’t want people I’d never met at my own wedding, to be honest. So no one’s +1 would be going.

A wedding is a joining together of two people. A celebration of that joining.

Yes, it is. It's about the bride and groom. A day celebrating their union. Not the relationships of their wider circle but them, themselves.

Why do you consider it disrespectful to not invite someone that the bride and groom have never met?

It’s rude, plain and simple. If you’re a good enough friend to be a bridesmaid, he should get an invitation. If your friend doesn’t want people she hasn’t met at her wedding (reasonable), she should make the effort to meet your long term partner. He’s not just a date you picked up a couple of weeks ago.

We didn’t do evening guests at all - if you were friend enough to come to the evening, you were friend enough to come to the whole thing. Your friend is stingy.

Oh me too.
That's why I'm not offended by any wedding invitations, but then I've always been invited to the wedding and not told to occupy myself while they have the reception and come back later.
That's the norm in my social circle.

While it does sound rude, I do understand the bride and groom a bit.
We are married for many years now and did invite all +1s to everything, however, when I look at our wedding pictures now I can’t even remember the names of around 30% of the “partners”. Our wedding was the first and last time we saw them.

I just don't see it that way. More of a standard invitation to the evening (completely normal) and also information that of course you are also invited to the (semi-public anyway) ceremony. But I take all invitations as that and not as expectations on me.

It's not cheap because it isn't saying "come to St Thomas's at 11 then to the Royal Oak hotel at 7.30 and screw you in-between because we don't really like you" despite people choosing to take it that way. It's "please join us at the Royal Oak hotel at 7.30 to celebrate and if it suits you you are of course also welcome to join us at St Thomas's for our wedding at 11".

I like choosing not to be pointlessly offended.

It's probably just the cost. Try not to take it personally. Your friend has nothing against your partner because she's never met him. If he's happy to stay home you go alone.

I hate weddings like this. The bride should be ashamed of herself.

I'm tempted not to go to modern weddings. They are nothing more than an exercise in instagram narcissism.

Invite your loved ones, entertain them as you can afford, don't exclude, always have babies and children, allow a bit of generosity to enter the day.

It’s a no, the right number of chairs or at least chairs sashes are hired at a cost per guest and the ceremony rooms are number restricted by fire regs/registrar.
If they turned up unexpected they would likely be refused admittance and wouldn’t have a chair.

Yes, thank you, I think that's my point really.

I get that but would also be considerate if my friend knowing she has been in a relationship for 3 years even if I haven’t met him because I’m living on the other side of the country.

As others have said OP should go and let her partner stay home.

Yes. Whilst the ceremony is public, in a church at least and anyone can attend, I think that if an invitation providing the details of the ceremony is included, then that should also be extended to the reception. Otherwise just invite to the evening party.

There is something very tacky about expecting people to attend the ceremony, and presumably in a good suit or tails or a nice dress and then expect them to entertain themselves until the evening party. It indicates little respect for their time and frankly why should they be expected to dress up for the ceremony if they are less important to the bride and groom than others.

I work in the industry, you’re right people don’t do that, the only time I’ve seen this happen is when the guest comes to ceremony and then goes to work, usually emergency service workers attend a 12pm wedding and then go work the 2pm shift. In 150+ weddings per year none have invited ceremony guests then ditched them in the venue and had a reduced number of guess to their drinks reception then wedding breakfast meal.
It’s very poor manners and usually an older relation points it out because they would feel embarrassed. Also - what if they didn’t go and just hung around, awkward all round!

You're missing my point (deliberately, methinks).

A wedding is a joining together of two people. A celebration of that joining. So why do you think it is correct to disrespect the other couples' commitment to each other by excluding one of a couple?

We had one of these and my partner went. I did t bother.

Church weddings are considered public events. Anyone can attend, invited or not.

I'm not sure whether that extends to all (non-church) wedding ceremonies or not though, quite possibly!

I think that's not really the point, because people do take it to be an invitation. If you get an invitation and it includes the details of the ceremony, it's clearly an invitation, no matter what English law says. Otherwise what's all this upthread about the bloke being invited to the ceremony but not the reception?.
If you're inviting people to share your wedding, I think you should host them at the reception. Just my point of view.

It's definitely cheap.

Strictly speaking, the ceremony is, by law, a public ceremony; to allow objections to the marriage taking place. You're not so much 'invited' (anyone can walk off the street and attend the ceremony) as 'informed' as to time and place.

This.

We chose to have the room full of friends and family we both know and love, rather than half full of people that one or other of us had never met.

Nobody split up because of it. 😂

Just because something is conventional or is (or was) English social behaviour, doesn't mean it should be followed.

Personally, we chose to have the room full of friends and family we both know and love, rather than half full of people that one or other of us had never met. If either of our friends had partners that hadn't been bothered enough to meet us, then we didn't bother enough to extend the partner an invite. Quite reciprocal really in that sense.

Would you invite a stranger to all your important, intimate life events?

And you choose to celebrate your coupledom by splitting existing couples?

No it's cheap. It's saying that as guests, they're not quite good enough to deserve the pricey meal with the good wine, but if they don't mind hanging around dressed in wedding gear, entertaining themselves nearby for a few hours at their own expense, they can come and have a sausage roll and a crack at the cheeseboard later on. It's not a very thoughtful invitation.... and significantly less thoughtful than just inviting them for evening, so they don't waste half a day killing time between bits.