Friend assuming wedding invite despite not inviting me to hers the same year..

Because you're making it all sound so transactional. "SHE didn't give ME 100% so how can SHE expect 100% from ME?!" It's reductive - you're seeing the whole situation in terms of benefits gained and lost, status and rank (am I not an important enough friend?), entitlement.

Weddings are often an emotional flashpoint, so it's understandable to get caught up in this mindset. But it would help you to take a step back and focus on the affection you feel for your friend. Celebrate her marriage and let her celebrate yours.

Why would you invite her? She clearly doesn’t see you as a close friend or you’d be going to the full celebrations at her wedding.
It’s a wake-up call.

Let her assume whatever she likes. You don’t need to be a doormat in this situation.

YANBU to limit her invitation to evening only.

I’s be delighted to escape a hen do!!

wtf? Why didn’t you even get a hen do invite? That’s just mean. Even people who can’t make it to wedding/aren’t invited to full day still come to the hen. She’s not a friend imo.

OP has said that they are a very close group of friends who have known each other for over 20 years and have always attended each other's life events. It does sound churlish for OP's friend to exclude all these friends from her wedding apart from one, particularly as she has a big budget and a very small family.

OP would be perfectly reasonable just to invite this friend to her evening do and not the whole wedding. This friend has made it clear that this group of long-standing close friends aren't close enough or sufficiently important to her to invite them to her wedding.

Some people are saying that OP would be horrible to do this as it would be tit for tat and unfair. Other people may think that this is just the consequence of OP's friend's own actions. She sounds quite thick-skinned and unembarrassed about expecting an invitation to OP's full wedding when she hasn't invited OP to hers.

I wouldn't be too bothered about it tbh. Yes it's a bit weird she's presuming she's invited when she's not inviting you but maybe you've talked about it in your group about how one is a bridesmaid or your other friends have mentioned it to her? Could be a whole number of things.

Idk, I'm sure that I have a few friends who are way more important to me than I am to them. It's just the way it is. If you're inviting that group to the whole thing and it would be strange to exclude her then just do that and enjoy your day, no worrying about if she's upset etc.

Admittedly I don’t know much about wedding politics in the UK but can’t you just ask?

So just invite her to YOUR evening event, like she's invited you to hers. Problem solved. You're not excluding her, you're just matching her energy.

If/when she brings up your wedding just say "oh we haven't finalised the guest list yet" & then change the subject.
And as your wedding is local an evening invite would be easy enough for her to attend. She is entitled to think that she deserves a full invite to yours but you are relegated to an evening only invite for hers.

Ooh. I'd be telling the others they aren't invited to her wedding day, if they think they are!

I would only invite her to your evening do. Her assumption of being invited to yours is very cheeky. Weddings are expensive. Why do you want to waste some of your budget on someone who has shown you that you aren't important to her?

If her wedding was 6 months after yours or a year after yours you wouldn’t know if she was planning to invite you to the wedding.
So I would go with what you want to do, if you wanted to invite her personally as a friend to your wedding go ahead if you only felt obliged to invite her as part of the friendship group then don’t invite her. We had very close engaged couple friends who came to our small wedding, friendship cooled after they moved away and we lost touch. I saw on social media they had eloped to get married. Good for them doing things the way they wanted to. Do I regret inviting them because we obviously weren’t as close as I thought ( and they didn’t have a wedding to invite us to) not at all, I think of them with fondness on the rare occasion I get my weddings photos out.

I assume that this woman's behaviour (not inviting OP to her wedding but assuming that she will be invited to OP's) is making OP like her much less than she did. She does sound presumptuous.

Absolute reciprocity - 100%, mirror-like. Has always been the etiquette, unless couple run away to get married at the beach or suchlike with no guests (then no offence taken) and the other exception is when there is a vast difference in rank - i.e. the Beckhams and Serena Williams were invited to Prince Harry's wedding, but they would not dream to invite him to theirs in due course.

If she actually does go on about her hen do to you all despite not inviting most of you, you send a polite private message to her telling her this is a bit off and can she stop it.

Otherwise, just shrug it off and don't worry about it. If her hen do is overseas and expensive to attend, be glad you're not having to work out your excuses!

Why not ask her?

Maybe she assumes that she’s just invited to the evening part of your wedding, same as you’re only invited to the evening part of hers?

Maybe she's only expecting to be invited to the evening do of yours.

Imagine her wedding didn't exist, would you have invited her then ? Only one of your group is invited to the Hen/day wedding, she is not just excluding you there are 4 others who have also been chopped. You are all invited to the evening which if you are friends you should go. It all sounds so bloody petty and childish

But when you put it like that, don't you think it's better for everyone that there aren't two hen do's and two weddings that you all have to go to? Basically her method - which i don't disagree with (see my wedding rationale below) - means that you come off as the better person whose having the wedding that the whole group will look forward to and enjoy all of together and remember forever. Hers will just be an evening do and will retain the awkwardness and bad aftertaste.

In relation to your bigger question about reciprocation rules etc., my wedding rationale is invite who you want, don't invite who you don't want, that is all. I know people make these things way more complicated, but if you have the wedding you want, then that's always defensible and you can have no regrets. Accordingly, we invited no one as it was just about us being married and went off and got wed and had the best time. Still together nearly 25 years later so pretty much happily ever after. Do what you like and don't overthink or get drawn into other people's politics. It's about you and your DP and having a great time.

I can see why you're annoyed if she seems to be just assuming she'll be attending all of your wedding and the hen do when she didn't invite you to everything, but I think I'd take it less personally because you're not the only one from the group invited to the evening only.

It's never pleasant to realise that you 'rank' a friendship more highly than the other person does, and it certainly does look as though she prioritises some of her other friendships groups above this one. However, you're also prioritising one member of the group above the others, if she (another friend) will be a bridesmaid and the others won't.

She shouldn't be assuming. I'd be embarrassed to do so, in her place. I'd be surprised if the other members of the group don't also have thoughts on the matter and would probably have been discussing this situation with at least the friend you're having as a bridesmaid. You don't have to invite her to the whole thing, of course, and I'd be tempted to let her know that the invitation list (and her place on it) hasn't been finalised, in some subtle (or not so subtle) way, but it's probably better not to do that.

Let’s pretend she isn’t getting married, would you have invited her to everything? If the answer is yes, then that’s all you need to know. Different people have different rules for their weddings.

I’ve never understood the evening only thing. I’m either close enough to someone to want them to come to my wedding or I’m not. So everyone either got a full invitation or they didn’t get one at all. It didn’t matter if you had invited me to your wedding or evening do.

My rule was that if I had (or DH) your number in my phone and I’d happily call you up and go out for a few drinks with you then you got an invitation! And no plus 1’s.

The only exception to that was we allowed our parents to invite their friends. It was only fair as they were paying for our wedding!

She doesn’t really value your friendship group. And, it seems that even though she is closer to you than most of the others, she sees you as a peripheral friend. I think I it would make me reassess my friendship with her and I wouldn’t make any decisions in a hurry. Chances are, your friendship isn’t going to last.