To ask why evening invitations to weddings are considered rude/ cold?

[LucyLot]

I am getting married at Christmas time. We can have 140 guests to the full day but both have large ish families and actually there are a lot of people we want to invite but can't afford to have at the full meal so we have had to go through the list and we have an additional 40 or so we are inviting to the evening do.

This number includes some cousins, work friends etc. We still really value these people we just had to draw the line somewhere. MIL seems to think offering an evening invitation is an insult. We are only giving people evening invitations of they live locally (in the same city).

Personally I don't see the problem- we will be inviting them to a party with a hot buffet, cake and some free champagne, what's wrong with that! We are not asking for gifts.

Would anyone here be offended to receive an evening invitation?

Evening invitations are very normal in Scotland.

I'm never offended, just delighted to be invited!

Agree with local. Anyway who needs to travel should be all day. At our wedding NCT group and some colleagues were our evening only guests.

Sorry, I should have said that evening-only invitations should be just that, evening-only. I don't agree with this trend for inviting people to the ceremony, kicking them out while the A-tier eat a nice meal, and then asking them back in the evening for a pay-bar and crap canapés. It's extremely rude!

If you are doing an evening invite only whatever you do don't send a Save the Date. We got a Save the Date for a wedding across the country, 6 months in advance, I was pregnant and knew we would have a 2 month old at the time of the wedding. Diligently booked our Travelodge room, and then only got an evening invite. It was a family thing, was still expected to buy off the wedding list, no food because everyone had eaten. Pissed off doesn't quite cover how I felt. It is a relative of DH and I still don't like the woman.

a) the evening guest is being told they are second class as they didn't make the cut for the smaller number at the wedding

b) the whole day is about the wedding - so it is bizarre to invite people, but not invite them to the wedding...

very weird, I would never go to just an evening do...

Love an evening only invite! Get to wear a more evening-y outfit, get ready at my leisure and arrive looking fresh and gorgeous! day guests are ussually glad of a new face too and there's bacon rolls to boot!

Evening invites are fine by me - if it's local we go and have a good time, if it's not then just decline. It's a party!

A badly-organised wedding that leaves some people left out in the cold or without drinks/food is rude whether the guests are all day or evening-only.

I think people who get offended and upset that they've not been invited to the whole day are rude and have a strange sense of entitlement. It's about sharing some part of a special day with the happy couple, whom one would assume you like, not about being included in the 'good bits' and getting a nice meal.

Of course it's acceptable to do evening only invites. Like many others have said, it just needs to be given a bit of thought. I have been an evening guest and been delighted to be invited at all. Old school friends not seen for a few years, cousins, aunties etc. It's been lovely on the times it's been done well. Awkward at times when evening guests are an obvious after thought.

So my thoughts -

Very important IMO to make sure evening guests are actually welcomed on the day! Really important to keep to time so don't make evening guests feel uncomfortable. Being kept waiting outside the main event like a lemon, listening to the raucous laugher of the speeches still going on but not being allowed in and being spoken to by staff in whispers is not really acceptable. Then finding everyone else is already drunk from the free booze that has now stopped. Then not having anywhere to sit as everyone still at their tables from the meal. Then discovering the rest of your old friendship group were invited to the full day, but you weren't....

So if you have evening guests make sure they are told to arrive at a convenient time and don't run over. Make sure the meal and tables have been cleared away and room set up for the evening. It only really seems to work well as an evening guest if there is a clearly separate 'day' and 'evening' do - if they just run into one another I don't feel particularly welcome. Whereas if the day guests are in a different room to where they ate and waiting for the evening party to start too as well it feels ok.

Make sure the evening guests have somewhere to sit and not made to feel like second class citizens loitering at the back. Ideally I'd say ask evening guests to arrive after the meal, when all the day time guests are up from their tables, but before the music starts. If the room needs clearing and resetting so guests are ushered into a different room then that seems the perfect opportunity for the new guests to arrive. Make sure as the bride and groom you are looking out for your evening guests and make the effort to go and say hello/ thank you for coming. Give the evening guests a free drink, if you have been serving free drinks for the day time guests.

Don't split friendship groups. So don't 'grade' friends in the same circle of friends, unless it's a really natural split. Invite all the group to the day or all to the evening. Making a statement of who is better friends than an other will be rude.

Evening invitations are not ideal, but better than 'ceremony only' which I have received in the past. I read this as 'I want you to come and watch me be a bride but I don't want to provide you with any hospitality even though you've travelled 3 hours' etc.... very rude in my opinion. At least in the evening, you are invited to celebrate with the couple and they are hosting you - it's easier to argue that they want the ceremony as the special part to be more private.

We had some evening invites due to seating restrictions.
It was mostly local work friends that were given these invitations. We did say that we would love them to come to the ceremony though if they could make it. Everyone just seemed thrilled to be invited xx

We did this to our wedding for the same reasons. It's your day, do what you want. If people are offended then they will choose not to come. Weddings are expensive and most people I think would realise that.

I think it probably depends on the type of wedding and the type of guests. We had a church wedding to which half the village turned with and without invitations. All good. We then went to the local small family run golf club for dinner with close friends and family and anyone who would be travelling. In the evening we threw out a casual invitation to anyone and everyone we knew locally to join us for hog roast and dancing in the evening. Nobody had to travel as they were all local but it meant that loads of old school friends that we hadn't seen for ages turned up to our reception rather than meeting at the pub that night.

I can see that if its more formal it might not have the same appeal. But really, everyone knows weddings can be expensive and its difficult to please everyone. Most people are just happy to be considered. Last weekend I was at a evening reception invitation only wedding. It was great.

'To be frank we only accepted because there isn't really a valid reason we could use not to. The couple obviously think we would be happy to pay £100 plus each way for taxis hmm - we are far too mean grin - so we accepted and have decided we will only stay for 2 hours max and sip fruit juice/coke all night sad - difficult as we both love a glass bottle of wine - but we felt declining would be very rude in the circumstances.'

For next July? FGS, make up an excuse and cancel.

TBH, I never thought anything bad about "evening only" invitations until I came on MN - they were just standard in my circle of family and friends.
It was fully accepted that some people came to the whole day, and others only got invitations to the evening piss up.

It was only MN that made me see some people have a different view on this! (And gift lists, and money as gifts etc.)

My feeling is that it's perfectly ok to invite some people to evening only (still) - colleagues, hobby friends rather than close friends (DH's tennis buddies, for e.g.) and other interested parties who don't want the formal part of the day (piss-up friends).

Do what you need to do - most people will understand.

The whole British wedding thing is a bit naff. Honestly, is an evening reception ever like a good night out?

Personally I think the whole thing needs to be thrown in the bin and rethought. The wedding industry is worth billions and I only know a couple of people who can look back at the whole thing without cringing. Surely there's a better way to celebrate? Anyway I digress...

OP if it's your MiL who is complaining is it perhaps the age or disposition of the evening guests? An under 30 with no responsibilities may jump at the idea of a party but her 80 year old second cousin with arthritis who used to help look after her kids when they were babies not so much...

That's really silly. They probably wouldn't have cared a jot if you'd declined.

Ummm. A wedding invite is an invite not a summons. You barely know them and it seems like you are spending the thick end of £200 on something that'll suck.

I think it's fine for people who live locally.

I have been invited to an evening-only reception in Yorkshire, when I was living in Surrey. That did miff me a bit as the bride had come to my wedding and hen do. But to be fair, I had a young baby and they probably knew we wouldn't go anyway. As it happened we had booked to be on holiday at the time so we just send a card and present and went on holiday instead.

I've received not just an evening invitation but a quite late evening invitation (i.e. I was a second choice). I wasn't offended at all. It was somebody I liked a lot but didn't see a lot of these days. I had a really nice time. It did help that there was food still available and I was invited in time for the cake cutting and the first dance, so still got some of the proper "weddingy" bits so it felt properly like marking the occasion.

I do think it would be awkward if you were making people travel, in case they might feel obligated to spend money on travel/hotel etc. but they way you are doing it I really think if people are offended then they will just have to suck it up! They don't have to come if they don't want to. Surely nicer to be invited to some of it than to be left out?

I would not be offended at all. Weddings usually have 'evening guests' it's not like your being odd. For our wedding we had close friends and family for the ceremony and photos (invitees were sent a full invitation stating that people should not feel obliged to bring gifts 'their presence is present enough' type thing.) and the evening guests we invited to come along for buffet meal with dancing and drinking (in the style of a party invitation with no mention of gifts at all).
I have never been offended at receiving an evening only invite, and have loved receiving full invites. -I love a good wedding 😁
I think people understand the cost involved in getting married, the fact that venues have limited numbers etc. and anyone who feels petty about it - well they don't have to come! 😉

People get upset:

1. when you send evening-only invitations to those who live some distance away (who would therefore need to spend significant time travelling and stay overnight)

1. when you send evening-only invitations to those who think of your relationship as a very close friendship. In this case it's not so much the invitation itself that's the problem so much as a sudden realisation that you don't think of the relationship in the same way that they do.

1. (subset of 2) when most members of a group (e.g. university friends) get daytime invitations but one is singled out and invited just to the evening. This is effectively saying "Hey, X, I don't like you as much as I like the rest of the group" and X tends not to take this very well.

If you're not doing any of those things then you are probably fine.

Rafflesway, declining an invitation is never rude (unless you are immediate family or someone who'd previously agreed to be a member of the wedding party).