To not invite partners to wedding?

[MrsLovely]

I am getting married in a few months time. Now I am of a fairly advanced age, and to be quite honest up until now the whole idea of marriage has scared me. But I'm finally grown up enough and in a relationship where I want to take this step.
Anyway, because of this, I'm having a very small ceremony, very close friends and family only. There are a couple of very old friends I would like to invite,but not their partners. Because their partners aren't old, close friends. Although they are friends. But I don't want them to be part of my wedding ceremony! They would be invited to the party (which, incidentally is on the day after the wedding).
Is this really terrible? I haven't sent out invites yet so will abide by mumsnet decision!

Since a wedding is about celebrating the union of 2 people, I would say it is bizarre to not allow other guests to bring their partners.

Oh QQ you are sadly misguided.

A wedding is about one day when the person is drunk and berserk with POWER and can wield it unchallenged.

I wonder why wedding threads go on.

And on.

And on.

And on.

(actually there shouldn't have been full stops between those should there?)

at hully. I've always thought weddings turn perfectly normal people into crazed power freaks!

Complain in whatever way Hully , out loud, in your own head, whatever.

Now I am paranoid that I need to invite everyone I ever met to everything in case they all run off crying that I haven't respected their union/shoes/dog/toenails.

I remember one of DH's friends getting married. They had a "small" wedding which partners weren't invited to.

I was hugely offended, and always thought of her as a neurotic troll after that. Anyway when DH and I got married in the Caribbean and it was all paid for for close friends to go free, guess who never got an invite?

Yabvu and rather rude.

Adversecamber- I think it's OK if it's colleagues going to a wedding evening do in a work gang, I probably wouldn't mind in those circumstances.

One of my friends did this, she invited just 4 close friends to her small wedding (nice spa hotel overnight thing), I went without DP and dc. I felt honoured to be one of the invited few actually, cos I hadn't known her for that long. Yes I would rather have gone with dp or another close friend as I didn't know the other friends and family, but I wasn't offended at all, quite the opposite. DP was fine too home with the dc.

I think if you want your friends to be comfortable and happy in your wedding then you ought to invite their partners, you do not want for them to be bored, or feel alone at your wedding, you want them to be happy, so their partner would be the perfect companion to them. I think you ABVU.

I think that if you are genuinely thinking of inviting less than say 20 people, and no partners or husbands at all it might be ok, but still think you should discuss it with your friends first.

If my partner wasn't invited and got there and a friend's DH was there I would feel very very hurt.

OP I definitely think you should talk to your friends. Have a general discussion about why you want to limit the numbers for the ceremony. See what they say. I think foreveronadiet is right that there needs to be fairness about how you treat the same class of people (eg no friends' partners from either side). It might be that the partners are happy with just going to the party, my DH would be delighted, he finds ceremonies and formal receptions boring.

My brother is planning on marrying next year. He and his wife can't cope with the thought of any guests at the ceremony so there won't be any. Although we're close, I'm ok with not going (although I'd love to be there). Their comfort and enjoyment is more important than my wishes. If I found out 15 of their friends were going, I'd feel hurt. If they invited just parents and siblings, I'd go without DH although might be a little sad as he's known them a long time and he's the only in law so wouldn't add much to the numbers.

I went to a wedding last year (evening reception only) where my DH wasn't invited. I went with 2 school friends whose husbands weren't invited either. The bride had been to all our weddings. My DH wasn't bothered about not going. When we arrived we found that she had invited the unmarried partners of people she sees a little more often than us, but hasn't known any longer. I did think it was a faux pas on the bride's part although I'd never say anything to her. I think you have to write your guest list to fit your room/budget. Had I not been invited at all, I wouldn't have minded. I probably would have been ok if I was warned before the invitations what she was planning. It was done very clumsily and that's what gave rise to some offence.

I am quite amazed by this - if there is ever talk of a 'child-free' wedding on MN, the consensus is 'it's entirely up the couple whether or not they want children there'. I don't see this as massively different - can someone explain that to me please?!

I think child-free tends to be to do with logistics and the nature of the wedding eg whether it will go on a long time, levels of sophistication etc. It is a kind of generic non-invitation with I think on the whole everyone's comfort in mind though this might not have been well thought through.

We didnt invite children to our wedding because at the time we didnt have children and we didnt think that children would enjoy the style of wedding lunch we had chosen. In hindsight we should have invited children and let parents decide whether or not their children could deal with the type of food & setting. In hindsight I realise that what we did was rude.

I dont think that not inviting partners especially in this case is about everyone's enjoyment but about the bride symbolically inviting very close friends and to me looks like deliberately excluding partners. Inviting a person and not their partner to a wedding looks like rejection.

If a friend who didn't particularly know DP invited him, but because of a limit on numbers (cost or space) was unable to invite other friends, I would think she was barking.

Friends' partners trump friends, basically

Actually I think this did happen to me. I remember thinking it a bit odd at the time - chap she'd known for donkeys only invited to the evening do; I was invited for the whole day despite having spoken to her maybe twice ever, because I'm the partner of DP (who she knew as well as evening-only chap).