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.

The friend is a CF however, the hotel is at fault.

They should not have charged anything to the B & Gs account. End of.

Friend is most definitely in the wrong for numerous things, 1. Not reading and Losing invitation, 2. Turning up 'late' (although we know he wasn't) 3. Thinking it is ok to charge food to another room and Not even having decency to tell B&G he had charged to their room.
Friend should have checked with B&G what time he was expected to join them not another guest. This would have avoided this problem.
Venue should not have allowed him to charge food to any other room than his own.
Also I thought it is quite common to have 'evening only ' guests. I have been to weddings where I have attended full day, mainly family and close friends, an couple of work colleagues who I also socialise with outside of work. I have been to the evening only, which has usually been a work colleague, but not one i would socialise with, (other than team events or christmas party etc) , a friend from a hobby, friend of a Friend or family friend. I have also been to the ceremony and then just the evening celebration too. For people who have large families, who take up the majority of your 'day' guests it can be extremely costly to have everyone for a 3 course meal and then evening celebration as well. My understanding is that what evening celebrations are for?

Had to skip a few pages as some of the ‘evening guests only is rude’ thing is really testing my patience! When I got married (both parents deceased) we really struggled with the day/evening thing. As each person invited to the day was a minimum of £30 per head plus wine we had to be very careful. I also wanted a nice venue for what was my wedding day, spacious homes/gardens/fields not being an option. Everyone was welcome to the church, we had about 100 to the day and a further 30 (work colleagues and partners we had never met in our lives) to the evening. I actually don’t care two figs if they thought we were being rude, we were providing an evening buffet and disco and a couple of free drinks. Maybe we didn’t ‘care’ enough about them to invite them to the whole day but from what I remember they had a bloody good night, and yes, we did welcome them and danced until very late when many of the day guests had gone. I am never offended to be invited to an evening of a wedding, it is an honour to be included at all. And to say would you invite people over to your house for drinks after hosting a dinner party is ludicrous, of course not - it is not even comparable!

What a twat!!!

One of dh 'friend's did this. He was only invited for the evening do. When he heard we were getting married he assumed he was invited for the whole day and pestered dh for details well before invites were sent out.
Dh actually doesn't like the guy at all (tried to get dh to lie for him while he plays away so dh stays away from him)

He arrived at the venue with his wife just as we were going in for meal. Several hours early. Anyway he disappeared faking a serious illness (probably embarrassed I think) haven't heard from him since.

We wanted a small wedding, could only accommodate about 40. We had to do day or evening invites

Omg!!! Is that man for real! What a horrible thing to do to the bride and groom at their wedding! They obviously couldn’t afford to have so many people at the meal so invited family only and long distance friends as they were making a long journey!

Your actual post is more embarrassing

Why is the post more embarrassing?
Any specific reasons?

Weddings have become so tightly controlled and showy. 35 years ago we thought it was more about having a party and saving our ££ for the house deposit. We had a self (and friends) catered event in the day for 50 and the evening party was open to pretty much anyone we knew and we were fine if they brought friends. It was bloody brilliant and I'm sure some of the elderly rellies were glad to skip the evening rave as much as the young crowd of acquaintances, work colleagues and mates were glad to dance till dawn to one of the local djs rather than naff wedding toons.

And I notice that no one has brought up the rise in parties the night before the wedding? Two weddings in the last two years have included an invite to the "wedding eve" which has necessitated an extra night in a hotel. On neither occasion was I aware that this was for ranked guests.

Evening invites are absolutely fine. Why on earth are people so sensitive at the idea that MAYBE, just MAYBE people do have tiers of friendship?

My work colleagues would be astounded if I invited them to the full day, and inconvenienced, to be honest, for the sake of people I never meet outside of work but would be a laugh to have a few drinks with. I spent all of Saturday morning faffing and stressed to get to a very dear friend's wedding, then wasn't home til mid afternoon Sunday.

There're plenty of people to whom you're not as close to as others. The idea that it's some kind of grave affront to acknowledge that is laughable to me.

Oh and just another point on full day guests.

One of my friends was quite surprised to be invited to the whole day of a distant acquaintance's wedding (only connection was that they were co-bridesmaids for a mutual friend, but they hadn't really kept in touch).

My friend is now my bridesmaid, and we're using the same venue as the acquaintance. It turns out, if a room isn't used (and you have to book the whole venue), the venue charge 2/3rds of the rate to the married couple. Far from being an honour, the B&G were just off-setting costs!

I'd much rather be a much-desired evening guest than a way of cost saving!

The neck of that so called friend 👹

Local friend WBU.

I dislike "evening only" invites. On arrival, it feels like you're interrupting a party you weren't wanted at.

Despite the valid comments or opinions posted throughout, nothing changes the fact that the gatecrasher described in the OP, which started this whole discussion, is a selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate twat!!!