Have I been unreasonable here? I'm quite embarrassed

[PayingMyWayYouSay]

I have sent my wedding invites out and a lot of them say, for example, "To Donna and family"

Is this really rude that I didn't name individuals? For example, her DD is only 8 so would naturally come under family, but how about her DP who I don't know etc? He's more than welcome to come, I just don't really know him.

Another reason for me not putting names of everyone is that I don't have everyone's address and know if I invite say, a big aunt, and include "and family" or other invitations within saying "Joseph and family" if they have a family of their own, they will get this etc.

For example, with my great aunts invite, I sent my cousins invite and put 'and family'. But DCousin'a children have their own families and she wondered if they were invited too? They are of course.

I've been really shit at this, haven't I?

Have I caused offence?

Things must have changed because 'save the date' cards weren't a thing when I got married, I don't understand them at all. Is it a request or an instruction? Do you reply to it?

It's not offensive, but you may have just invited 600 people to your wedding!

Save the dates are just to confirm the date of the wedding when details haven't been finalised yet, they are just that, to ask the recipient to "save the date"

They don't require a formal response, that is to be given when the invites go out, however if you knew you couldn't attend I'd consider it good manners to let he B+G know.

Why the confusion? Surely anyone in receipt of an invitation (or even a Christmas card) addressed to "Bert" and Family would understand that it meant a household and not everyone on the family tree? It would be rude to assume otherwise.

With no names on invites guests will bring their new boyfriend/girlfriend, single people will take a +1 and teenagers will take all their mates.

I hope there's not a sit down meal.

With no names on invites guests will bring their new boyfriend/girlfriend, single people will take a +1 and teenagers will take all their mates.

No they won't. As for teenagers it's more likely they wouldn't want to go at all let alone make anyone else have to go.

I think if you have adult cousins with their own families it is actually pretty insulting to send their invites to their parents' houses (unless they live with their parents, obviously).

[At least I found it insulting when this happened to me]

Not offensive just waaaay confusing. How will you know how many chairs you'll need? How will you be able to cater for an unknown amt of people? I'd send out s follow up if you need to know allergies etc and find out exact numbers.

If it's a sit down meal, how will you do a seating plan and place names?

I always think 'and family' is a bit lazy in Christmas cards etc.

Yes, I hated that as a child, I felt really slighted if people couldn't be arsed to include me by name on a card!

So I keep a little notebook mainly for Christmas card use. In it I note the names of people's children. Everyone's name goes in the card. There are always new arrivals to add, and if I don't see the people often it's easy to forget names, or get them mixed up.

As for 'Save The Day' cards, I once had one that only included the names of the bride and groom. "Sarah and Dan are getting married". No address, no surnames. I actually thought it was someone else entirely!

Not offensive but I think confusing because your intention was to invite some fairly distant relatives. If my parents received an 'and family' invite from one of their cousins, there's no way I'd assume they intended to invite me and my siblings because that sounds like a huge wedding. If it was from one of my uncles/aunts or similar then I'd wonder if they'd forgotten my name but I would assume I was 'and family' even though I've long left home.

I think it makes it look like you can't remember anyone's name!

How are you going to have any idea of the head count if you're inviting unspecified members of whole families?
Unless you're having a picnic in the middle of a field (and even then!) it's an utterly bizarre thing to do

If you don't put names then no one will know who is invited or they'll assume everyone is and you'll end up with tons of guests.

I would take "& family" to be just the household so I think your aunts won't think it includes your cousins unless they still live at home.

You're going to get a LOT more people turning up than you thought. You'd be surprised who people consider 'family'. I'd consider clarifying, a church only has so much space, so does any venue, are you inviting people to eat etc?

If I received an invite for toasty and family, I'd assume you meant myself, dh and dd1&2.

If you sent one to my mum/MIL & family is assume my husband/me and our children weren't invited.

Also, I'd find it a little infantalizing if you sent an invitation for an adult, with a family of their own, to their mum.

How are you going to work out how many are coming?

If it's not that big a wedding it won't really matter. I don't believe that people who get a '& family' invitation will suddenly start bringing their whole family and not just the people in the house.

I have to agree that what you've done wasn't the most sensible manoeuvre! you've now sent out a bunch of invitations with unclear directions as to whom they're for - leaving yourself wide open to a whole load of unexpected guests!

You're going to have to follow up, either with another note, or by phoning everyone to specify who you meant by "and family"; unless you're having a barndance style wedding where it doesn't matter how many people come along, and the more the merrier, type thing.

It's a bit rude to not spend a few minutes (per invite, I realise this may add up to quite a bit of time but still!) double checking names and putting them clearly and explicitly on the invite.

I was just reading a thread this morning on here where the invite read DH + Guest (i.e. not using her the OPs name when she's been with her partner for years), and she was ticked off, all the replies were indignant and they are going to decline (it's also a wanky expensive destination wedding so there's that too).

I think you've been a bit silly and not thought this through at all, but there's time to recover by contacting each "family" invite to confirm. You will need names for the tables at some point so you'll need to do it for that anyway.

You'd be surprised. I've seen this happen to a lot of people. An invite to the family you would presume is immediate family in the house the invite is addressed to but i've seen people bring auntie's and nan's because 'they must have meant them, they wouldn't have meant to leave them off'.

I thinks it's a strange way of doing things!
After all the threads on here over wedding invitations and confusion over who is invited I think it's best to be as clear as possible. If you know people well enough to invite them to your wedding why wouldn't you know their names?

You might also get some rsvp's that confirm we'll be there. But you won't know how many in the family that refers to!

Hi all, thanks for the replies.

Most have got back to me saying who will be coming in their family and who won't be as an automatic response without me promoting who is actually coming

No one has asked me yet to clarify who I mean. For example, Uncle Tom got back and said :

"Tracey and I will be coming. Sorry but Joe can't make it (their only DC)".

Done