Should parents have a say in wedding guest list?

[thedowntontrout]

At all?
I’m not talking about wanting to choose half the guests or Great Aunt Sue and your 15 cousins.
Should parents of the groom be consulted on the guest list and would it be unreasonable to expect to be able to invite 2 guests of our own choosing?

@rousette but where do you draw the line between small wedding and massive wedding? And why does your contribution come into it?

If you've made it a condition of contributing at the time you've made the offer then fine. But if you haven't I don't think it's relevant. I guess you might hope/expect that your dc would want to please you, but it still doesn't give you a right to insist on anything does it?

Re size of wedding, whether it's 10 guests or 100 guests, if the b&g have more friends than they have spaces, why should the parents' friends get priority? (Genuinely interested in people's views on this). I know my mum would rather I had been able to invite everyone I had chosen than I'd compromised so she could have her friends there.

I would say yabu. It is the bride and groom's day and a day for them to commit to each other in front of the people they care about, not a show for people to watch. If you want to share the joy of the day, meet your friends for a coffee at a later date, tell them all about it and show them the photos you've taken.

My MIL tried to demand 2 guests at our wedding (parents of my husband's ex girlfriend) we said no as we didn't know them well enough and weren't comfortable making our vows, giving speeches etc in front of them. For us, the wedding was quite intimate and even though we had 100 people, they were only people that we were comfortable seeing us make personal declarations.

If you make your vows in a church it is technically open to anyone to attend.

For us, the wedding was quite intimate and even though we had 100 people, they were only people that we were comfortable seeing us make personal declarations. Bleurch

@Roussette

No because it's their day with who they want. I wouldn't invite my friends

Harriet - because this is actually part of the tradition, both sets of parents should have a guest allocation. It’s just that so many people aren’t aware of the ‘correct’ way to do things. There are ‘rules’ about who goes where on the top table, the order in which the bridal party leave the ceremony, Who speaks in what order at the speeches the same goes for parents inviting guests. Couples abandon the ‘rules’ and do things their own way but I think in this instance denying parents their own guests should only happen when the bride and groom are paying for the wedding 100% and even then it’s very thoughless and self centred. I agree that ‘modernising and personalising wedding etiquette’ shouldn’t be another term for being selfish.

It comes into it harriet because it's all about consideration and not selfishness. I would not expect an adult child to accept £££££ to stage a showy wedding but then say 'aaaah... right... no you can't bring anyone to sit with, even though it's your best friend and her husband who has seen me grow up'. Luckily my DCs aren't selfish like this.

Why shouldn't my contribution come into it? If it was a huge venue and I was paying, I could just say OK I'll just add my best friend and her husband to the ££££££ I'm paying anyway, there's room for them. Is the child going to say, no no I don't want them there, I'll try and find two friends to sit in their place, I worked with someone 8 years ago, I could track her down

And as I said upthread me and my adult DCs are upfront about everything and it would be discussed right at the very beginning.

Going by your last para, .... if you read my previous posts on here, this has happened. A 250guest wedding excluding the partner of a close member of family with people there that hadn't got a clue as to why they were there and saying 'I haven't seen the bride for 10 years, no idea why I'm here'! So whilst you might be reasonable harriet, there are those who aren't. This particular wedding the bride wanted everyone there who she'd ever known. Ridiculous.

No because it's their day with who they want. I wouldn't invite my friends

We're all different

YANBU at all.

phalenopsis but "tradition" isn't a good reason for doing anything in and of itself. Gay marriage isn't traditional either, for example.

I'm struggling to understand why it's selfish to not invite your parents' mates to an event that is about you and your partner's commitment to each other. If you threw a big birthday party, say for your 30th or 40th, and your parents gave you some money towards it, would you invite some of their friends then? Or to your child's christening?

Also still don't understand the continued link between giving money and being involved in who comes (unless it's a condition of the money made clear at the outset). It's not tickets to an event or an investment where you expect some kind of return.

derxa
bleurgh all you like, we are not 'romantic' people and it would have been embarrassing to have to say our vows and speeches in front of people we vaguely knew.

I did mess up the numbers though, it was 55 (including wedding party) to the actual wedding and 100 to the night.

If I was having a big party for my 40th, 50th or whatever, I would want my kids to have some friends of there. This has happened and all of them brought friends and had fun.

Word it how you like harriet investment return blah blah, as I said before it is about kindness and consideration and thinking of each other AFAIC

Rousette I get what you're saying, but if the venue can't stretch to add 2
more people (whatever the size) so you essentially force your friends to have priority over the b&g's friends? That's the situation I'm talking about, and that's what seems to have happened to the OP - they've had to cut numbers, and her friends have been cut along with some of theirs.

Also why does an adult who is there with her husband and other children and new inlaws need someone to "sit with" for one day? Surely they won't sit with them anyway if they're on the top table?

(FWIW I don't think the b&g in the OPs case are behaving well at all)

Because a wedding isn’t just about you, it’s also the parents celebration of their children moving on in life, why do you think such importance is put on ‘the mother of the bride’? Because it was actually about the fact she had raised a daughter and had seen her successfully married. Wedding aren’t just a party about you and your relationship or if that’s how you want to play it then you can foot the bill. Do people also expect their parents to pay towards their 30th birthday ?!

OK not to 'sit with'. Call it 'to share the day with'

Because a wedding isn’t just about you, it’s also the parents celebration of their children moving on in life, why do you think such importance is put on ‘the mother of the bride’?

That is why the assumption by many that it is always the bridge/groom rather than the parent who want a big wedding is rather small minded.

Well I personally don't expect my parents to pay for anything for me. But weddings mean a lot of different things these days and I doubt parents who do contribute only do so on the basis their children stick to a load of (often outdated) traditions.

Do you think parents should only get a say in the guest list if the bride is a virgin wearing white in a church? Or do they only get a say if they've paid? And do they have to have paid for the whole thing or just part? Just not understanding your argument.

What's the importance put on MoB btw? Feel like I might have missed some kind of ceremony out for my mum when I got married...

And what about the father of bride - did he not successfully raise her too? (And what about the parents of the groom??)

Only bride and groom get say. If parents contribute it should be strings free not to buy places for their friends.

It’s a different relationship. Many mothers and daughters often have a bond that just feels different from other family relationships. Often it involves lots of door slamming and swearing and long silences. It can be visceral at times. I am probably closer to my son than daughter in some ways—we like the same books and TV and have a calm and humourous relationship, but when my daughter gets married it will kind of poke at a part of me that nothing else does. Even if there will doubtless have been a big row in the days before 🙂. She feels biologically close to me in a way my son doesn’t and I can’t rationally explain why. Same father.

And society has long instinctively recognised this.

Its nice if they ask. But, ultimately, It's their day so their choice.

Just read the whole thread. Did I get this right, they aren't even inviting the groom's brother?

harriet I'm not understanding your argument either! As I say it's about considering others and not just being 'me me me' , we'll do what we want, oh and would you foot the bill, and I don't care if you will really miss having your best friend and her husband there

As I say it's all hypothetical in my case. Both my DDs wouldn't even consider not having two particular close family friend couples. Even now one of them has said that (which is totally daft as she is between relationships and nowhere near getting married!) My DSS who knows what he would do if he got married!

And have to say, any wedding that any of them has, it will be totally their choice as to what sort of wedding day it is, I would not be talking them into a showy wedding and going by the threads on MN, I would love at least one of them to elope!

I'm old so my wedding was very traditional. My DPs paid for it. They had lots of their friends there and there were a lot of relatives as well. People that remained long after 'friends' disappeared. A wedding is a means to an end. It marks the beginning of a marriage.

Everything is about 'making memories' now. I remember our wedding day. We had a howling gale which almost blew my veil off.

Ditto derxa mine was very traditional too.

There's so much more freedom and flexibility now, really like that, protocols and tradition can go out the window.