Who was unreasonable at this wedding

[Dottie39]

Couple getting married. Family and long distance friends invited for whole thing, fairly small ceremony with around 40 guests and sit down meal.
Local friends invited to party afterwards.

After the ceremony, but before the meal, local friend arrives. His invite clearly said to come for evening only. He asks if he can join for meal but is told by staff all good is prepared however he can go to bar and order something himself. Bride and groom are oblivious to all this. (I'm sure if they had known they would have been more accommodating)

Local friend orders meal and stays for party.

The next morning when bride and groom check out they discover local friend has charged his meal and drinks to their room. They refuse to pay assuming mistake. Local friend, who had stayed at venue also is asked to pay. He argues couple should pay as they invited him to wedding and is now not talking to couple for embarrassing him and making him unwelcome.

Who should pay for the meal?
Who was unreasonable in this situation?
Local friend say they thought they were invited to whole thing, but was late and therefore missed ceremony.

No, no, Bluntness. They do. This is a thing. It's not common (probably because it's so rude) but it does happen.

It does - I've been to one wedding where some of the guests (not me) were given invitations like this. I also have a friend who had an appalling version of it which I think we can all, however we feel about evening invitations etc., agree was jawdropping. She and her long-term, live-in boyfriend were invited to a wedding in a town about three hours from where she lives. She was invited to the whole thing. Her boyfriend was invited to the ceremony and evening but not the dinner. That's right, he was expected to entertain himself for four hours in a strange town, alone. Obviously they didn't go.

It's a new trend sadly. There are threads -one from this past summer was well trafficked.

Ger a kebab?

I had a friend who did this. Yes it was very very awkward for the friendship group.

MargaretCavendish that's a particularly egregious example

All of this nonsense stems from the spoiled and entitled "our day" shite. People seem to think that getting married affords them the right to treat others like pawns for a day, with no regard to the effort that is being made by guests to turn up and support them. If I got one of those invitations I would conclude that the B&G were a pair of self-absorbed asshats and not going to their wedding would be the start of a beautiful non-friendship.

@MargaretCavendish
Didn't Pippa Middleton do something like this? No ring, no invite for the OHs of guests. I cannot imagine doing that. Plenty of people shun marriage these days and plenty of people who were married/engaged at the time of your wedding are no longer together!
Crystal ball anyone?

That’s bizarre only doing half of a couple. Fine if you’re not doing plus one at all particularly for a new beau but chopping it up and for someone travelling? Loco.

Weddings can be brilliant when those hosting think about the guests from logistics to facilities to comfort. They can be awful if people aren’t taken into consideration.

All of this nonsense stems from the spoiled and entitled "our day" shite.

Tbf I've seen plenty of spoiled and entitled shite from guests too.

Off topic - but I love an evening do.

Weddings and the meal are a bit dull in all honesty, much rather not have to sit through all that but go along for a lovely drink / dance / laugh with friends.

Day is for family and very close friends, evening is just a big party. Do we all have to feel that we are among the most special ones all the time or can we accept that people have different relationships with different people?

I haven't RTFT by the way so if this debate stopped after about page 6 - sorry.

In general I agree that any serious partners should be invited (I think it's ok not to let people having open plus ones, and to not have someone bring their girlfriend of 3 weeks) but in this case I think it would have been politer to have not invited him at all!

It was bonkers - she assumed she'd misunderstood at first, but it was pretty clear (they'd been sent two invitations in one envelope, one marked with his name and one with hers, and his made it clear that he was only invited to the ceremony and the evening).

I've been to one wedding where we were invited to a very big ceremony outside (Scotland so perfectly legal) and then the chosen few got a meal while the rest of us had to kick our heels for about 4 hours till the evening reception. None of us had ever heard of such a thing and were rather taken aback but the groom was English so perhaps it was normal in his area?

The normal evening invitation is to 'celebrate the wedding' from about 7.30pm till after the bar shuts at 1am. Normally something like a buffet is served about 10pm. It's not seen as an insult but an invitation to a party with food and a DJ or band, plus the trendy stuff like photo booth, sweetie bar, etc. An opportunity to have a good time and celebrate with the B&G and friends. Are people normally insulted at being invited to a party?

And the so-called friend was being extremely rude and grabby, let alone cheeky.

'Weddings and the meal are a bit dull in all honesty, much rather not have to sit through all that but go along for a lovely drink / dance / laugh with friends.'

That's true when the couple do the boring ol' all day shit. You can easily get married later in the afternoon and then just have one big party. Or get married in the afternoon and have a tea party. Or a morning ceremony with a brunch after. It doesn't have to last 12 plus fucking hours. That is tedious as all hell. And expensive, too.

'plus the trendy stuff like photo booth, sweetie bar, etc. '

Oh, god, who started that spectacular nonsense? Some evening do's are utter shit, as are some weddings, mainly when there's a lack of food. One poster on here went to a wedding where they were given a raisin scone to eat over about 10 hours. Still another told of an evening do where the featured food was bowls of Haribo and lollies, sweetie bar, shortcake and wedding cake. Boak!

I did go to a wedding once where the invite was ceremony then evening do, and we had to amuse ourselves for about 5 hours in the town centre. I was a bit put out (couple were old friends of my then-boyfriend and I was a plus one so I kept my thoughts pretty much to myself on the day). It was extra annoying as it was a good 150 miles from where we lived and in a town where all the pubs still kept to old opening hours - this was early 90s when all-afternoon opening had just started coming in. We walked for miles and miles before finding somewhere we could even get some lunch, on a cold damp February day.

However, I have no problem AT ALL with evening-only invites, because people who eg don't know the couple that well (workmates, friends from hobby group or whatever, and whose partners may not know the couple at all) are probably not that fussed about spending a whole day with strangers when they can just come along for a fun party in the evening.
The only time evening-only is a bit inconsiderate is if you are getting married in your childhood town and expecting your workmates and less-close friends to travel a long way just to have a couple of drinks and a snack with you. If it's the local pub then fine.

Well said greentulips

I can’t understand why someone would do this split invite rather than opting for a layer ceremony so an evening buffet is all you need or just do separate evening guests.

@Dottie39 if local friends invite says "night do - 7pm" then he arrives at 7pm. anything before then is daytime. However if invite just said "join us to celebrate after the service" then maybe LF got confused? But assuming there was a time, then local friend 100% is to blame. plus if you THOUGHT you were invited to the day do and staff told you no, you would surely ask to speak to the bride and groom!

Amazed that OP has to ask. 😂

Local friend is massive cf and should be forced to pay and defriended

There may well be the odd couple who do formally invite people to the ceremony and then the evening do, but IME it is far more usual to let people know when / where the ceremony is, in case they would like to attend when inviting them to the evening do. This, of course, refers to when the ceremony is open to anyone (as it is in a Church) and not if it is in a small room in a registry office or in a hotel room.

Generally speaking - as in this OP - evening guests tend to be people who wouldn't expect to be invited to the main day - colleagues, team mates from a sport, friends from a hobby, etc - so the fact they are invited, is an added extra, not an 'instead of'. I don't know why a minority of posters struggle to grasp that concept. Therefore, if the events are local, I quite like going along to the Church (where applicable) and seeing / taking part in the service. I realise it isn't compulsory, and choose to do that on those days.
I've also done it when invited to an evening Reception a few hours away. I thought - that's a part of the Country I don't know, I'll go and make a day of it on the Saturday as I'm traveling there anyway. Again, my choice, but, by the B&G letting me know what was happening, it gave me that choice. It didn't really matter to them if I went to the Church or not.

Groom said that he should not be charging to bridal room and friend got annoyed and walked away ... friend has since complained to many others about his poor treatment and is ignoring b&g

Well, at least that's the end of any doubt as to whose fault this was - and it's good that the hotel are taking it up with the CF rather than expecting the B&G to pay

Since this is mainly the groom's friend, I personally think it's mostly up to him how to deal with it. The "friendship" is trashed anyway so maybe it's best just to let it go, while realising they're just one more couple in a long list of others he'll have hacked off

and therefore fail to understand that someone might only be able to afford a lunch for 10 family members and then an evening 'come and join us in the pub.'

But that's totally, totally different. And completely fine - in fact, it sounds very nice. But it's a very different ball game from things I've seen along the lines of "100 people are going to x hotel for a meal at 4pm and then 50 people come, to the same place, at 7pm". The last one of those I went to (as a day guest, I will add) was particularly cringe inducing as the wedding had overrun quite significantly, so by 7pm people were still eating pudding, the hotel couldn't get the buffet laid out for the evening party and there was a constantly growing group of people standing awkwardly by the door twiddling their thumbs....

I was once invited to a wedding with DP for DPs mate. We were invited to the whole thing. We were also hosting other friends for the groom as we lived near the venue. This was fine as guests were also good friends of ours. Then I got uninvited from the ceremony as it was in a small room and no space. Ceremony at venue so could just wait in bar. DP still invited to ceremony. Annoyed but sucked it up.

Then a couple of weeks later I was also uninvited to the meal and downgraded to an evening guest with DP still being there all day. At that point I thought fuck it and went out on the lash that evening for my mate's birthday instead. DP still went to the whole thing (was perfectly fine by me) but came home early with guests and had a much shitter evening than me!

Also friend is unreasonable. I told story to show how reasonable your b&g were in comparison!