No more two tier weddings solution

[Pingiop]

MN stirs up a wide variety of opinions when it comes to weddings. Recent thread was a poster saying they weren’t going to attend evening invites anymore as they viewed it as a diss.

Not all people invited will be close to the couple and not everyone will invited to the day and night celebrations. People on these threads have suggested that the couple only have the wedding they can afford. Not to have the nice fancy dream wedding they have saved years for but to downgrade the venue so that this D list acquaintances can attend.

So in the solution of only having the wedding you can afford, it can be proposed that all couples only invite their chosen guests to both day and night celebrations, this will of course mean most people who aren’t regarded as close friends and family, so D list acquaintances, will never attend a wedding again unless the couple are rich and can afford to invite everyone. Is this a sensible solution to unreasonable entitled behaviour?

You can absolutely have closer and less close friends. It's just rude to draw their attention to it so publicly

My 5 year old understands this!

He didn't want to invite everyone in his class to his birthday and asked me how he could give out his invitations to avoid making it obvious to the children he wasn't inviting

But you would have known from your friendship group who was invited to what part of the wedding before attending it, so it wouldn’t have been some massive public shock to you. It was years ago, I think you need to get over it already.

You're a silly one aren't you

No one expects anyone to feel “humble gratitude.” (well no socially capable person does).

It was simply an invitation, not a social ranking or a test of loyalty. People were free to accept or decline — as adults usually do.

If an evening invite doesn’t align with how you see the friendship, that’s fine. But turning it into a dig says more about your expectations than anyone else’s choices.

If your friendships hinge on canapés and a seat at the top table, maybe what you’re missing isn’t invitations. In fact if you see “humble gratitude” as a marker of worth, maybe what you’re looking for isn’t friendship — it’s validation.

A class of 5 year olds who are seeing each other and playing together 5 days a week constantly is not at all the same as a group of adults who lives in different places and seeing each other at different times.

The one thing I’d say is the only evening do I ever attended the wedding breakfast was running late so even though we arrived after the time slot we were invited to we were made to stand outside the venue for nearly an hour. That wasn’t fun and I was marginally miffed to drive an hour and a half, wait outside for nearly an hour, have only about two and a half hours of the evening and then drive back again.

I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought until this thread. I’ve been to full days and evening only invite weddings and really enjoyed both. It’s always lovely to receive an invite, especially if it’s unexpected, to spend time with a couple on their special day.
We turned down an invite once when the plus one wasn’t invited, but other than that we always go if we can.

I wouldn’t invite the kind of person that gets wound up by this stuff to my wedding in the first place.

my friends and social circle aren’t the tightly wound and clenched types anyway.

We chose to only have people we really cared about at our wedding. Didn’t have separate evening guests - everyone who was invited was invited to the whole day.

We didn’t see the need to invite work colleagues etc to our wedding - if we wanted a night out with them then we would just organise that another time instead.

to your point about ‘d list’ guests never getting an invitation again - one person’s work colleague is another person’s sister or best friend - of course people would still be invited to weddings, it would just be to those of their nearest and dearest

I actually went to my closest friends evening do the week I met her. Wed got on so well she invited me to come that Saturday. Been mates for 25 years.

I did cause some drama by not going to an ex colleagues evening do. It would have been massively expensive to go to because of where it was. I’ve never seen her again, she was really offended I wouldn’t go. We weren’t really friends at all. Odd.

I feel people who get uptight about this don't attend many expensive, fancy or exclusive events. And have obviously never organised or held one themselves.

Is it nice? It just seems pointless. Why bother inviting work colleagues? Unless you don’t have many friends. Barbara doesn’t want to go.

Fair enough, pointless to you. So don't go. I've enjoyed it so not pointless to me.

Only on MN are people offended by being invited to a party in the evening 🤣 surely these ppl In real life are not so sensitive and petty

The only evening dos I’ve been invited to are where I’ve been surprised to get an invitation at all, so I’ve felt honoured, turned up and had a great time celebrating. I’d rather have an evening do invite only rather than the whole day affair as I’m not a big socialiser anyway.

Anyone who expects anyone else to spend often £100+ entertaining them for the day is just deluded.

Yes, but you don't travel for an evening do. I've done just evening dos and just the ceremony, but only if it's local.
It should go without saying that you don't spend money on a train ticket to just go to a bar for a couple of hours.

I can assure you it happens in real life. Also, not necessarily being offended, but finding it awkward. At one wedding, the dinner went on later than it should and the evening guests were kept waiting in a side room until someone said they could go into the main room. It just wasn't very nice.

On the other hand, I've been happy to go to just evening/just ceremony in the past.

And that is your issue. That’s why people don’t like miserable twats or want anything to do with them.

Oh no. I just gave another example, but at least we weren't made to wait OUTSIDE for an hour. That's awful.

Oh they most definitely are. Someone on here thinks it’s not a nice to invite a colleague from work…imagine that. You can’t can you 😂

"It's weirdly main-character-syndrome of you * to say that most people who aren’t regarded as close friends and family, so D list acquaintances, will never attend a wedding again - the people who are D list to you* are A List to the people they are close to."

Yes, but everyone will be A List to fewer people than they are D list to so, on average, everyone will go to fewer weddings.
I don't see this as a problem though, having not been to a wedding in over ten years anyway. You could compare with countries where weddings are huge - those people have to go to a wedding every weekend and I wouldn't want that.

I guess these type of people are never invited to anything, given this is their attitude. Huge chip on shoulder.

You can if you want to! I have done. I also travelled 3 hours on the train and spent money on a hotel for a 50th last year where it was just meeting in the pub without any food or drink paid for. Which was apparently horrifically rude of my friend according to some on here but I prefer to see it as nice I was invited and it being entirely up to me if I attended I did and very much enjoyed myself.

Ordering them out would invalidate the venue’s wedding licence so the wedding couldn’t take place. You would have wasted your and your guests’ time and money.

Bear in mind the public are only legally entitled the be present at the ceremony, you have no obligation to feed or entertain them. Although we did invite the people that turned up at ours to the rest of the day.

You might not like such events which is of course your prerogative, but lots of people do. "Barbara" might be delighted to be invited to a party to which lots of other people from work are going and she may be keen to see the B&G on their special day. Relationships aren't binary - you don't have to either be best friends with someone or not give a toss about them. Not in my world anyway. I like and care about many of my colleagues but only a few of them are really close friends. I think if I threw a big party, whether that was part of a wedding or for some other reason, a lot of my workmates would come and have an enjoyable time, even if they're not as close as theose who I might invite for dinner regularly or go away for the weekend with. Same with my sports club. I have a few really deep friendships there but there are lots more people whose company I enjoy well enough but I don't have a close relationship with. They're more than casual acquaintances but not super close friends. They're the sort of people who I might invite to a big celebration like an evening reception. I do like them and enjoy seeing them and I think it's reciprocated but I certainly couldn't afford to treat them all to a 3 course meal with wine and they wouldn't expect me to.
And if Barbara doesn't want to go to an evening do it's not difficult, she just RSVPs saying "I'm sorry I can't make it but hope you have a lovely day". Most rational people would not be offended either by receiving such an invitation or if they're the sender, by a polite decline.

It's done in Belgium too. You can be invited to the wedding and an apero afterwards, but not the meal. It can be in a separate venue, but my friend went to one where a few of them had to leave at a certain point and she said it didn't feel very nice.