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.

local friend is cf
but were it my c/f friend and I were b/g
1 I would have let them have my meal or asked hotel to work something out if I had known about it (poor form of hotel I think)
2 I would pay it with good grace and not let something like this ruin things for the cost of a dinner (although the cheekyfuckery would be noted for future reference)

Same where we're getting married, Darkness

What do the professionally offended propose in these circs l wonder?

We had to cut down our wedding to a very different thing than I'd wanted because of the number of bloody family we needed to invite. And we still had to have evening guests, although we did it so the only thing they missed was the ceremony. There literally was not a big enough registry office to include our work and hobby friends after all the sodding family. So we had to have tiered guests. I hated it. But unfortunately I don't have a handy relative with a house big enough for a do for a billion people in their garden.

That in itself is a huge privilege. Not inviting these people at all would have been rude but this way they still got to come to the food and fun bit.

For all those on their high horse saying that you should cut back and invite everyone to the full day - DH is non-religious and we married in our local register office, max capacity 40 people. We amply filled this with close family and friends, but wanted to celebrate the day with all our wider circle of family and friends too, so we staged the day accordingly. Our closest family and friends joined us for the ceremony (and a couple of friends not invited came by after just to wish us well; not in any way to make a point, they were just being very lovely), and held our reception in a local hotel that could accommodate 100 for the evening. Short of either marrying in a church or finding another larger venue that was not local (in the days before you could easily marry in lots of different places), I'm not sure how we could have possibly done it differently. We had a fabulous day, surrounded by everyone we loved. I would have been mortified to find out people thought we were tight for not going bigger

OP, the friend is clearly being CF and the hotel should cover the costs for not checking before charging to the B&G, unless B&G had specifically agreed to meet all guests' costs for the entire day.

Local friend was well out of order but so were the hotel. They shouldn't charge to a room without a signature or direct permission.

I know friends who have done the two tier thing for a hen do and I wasn't offended in the least. Maybe brides DM, DMIL, Dsis and two best friends from school go to lunch/shopping/etc. then everyone else joins them to go out at night.

Scotland too and day/evening guests are pretty common. I work with 30 plus people, all of whom I get on with. I would not be inviting all of them during the day but would happily invite them at night.

Amazed at the people who think evening-only invitations are rude! If you're asked over for coffee by friends do you also insist on a 3-course meal?

No, but if a friend invited me over for after-dinner coffee at 9pm after they'd served their real friends a 3 course meal I'd think they were pretty bloody rude.

uh oh, my parents are visiting today and we were going to get takeaway this evening. Then I was hoping my friend could come over for a glass of wine. Is there a certain amount of time I need to allow between the two things, or should I make it clear it's not "after-dinner wine" it's just "wine"? Are my parents allowed to stick around or is it less rude if they just go?

Evening invites aren't only about cost but about capacity. Our venue had a much smaller capacity for the ceremony and meal than for the evening reception. We did send some evening only invites but totally understood if people didn't want to come just for that.

He's a chancer.
I don't understand the uproar over evening invitations. It's completely normal. The whole day is for family and close friends. Evening is for work colleagues, people you go to the gym with, dhs football friends etc... If people don't like it they are free to decline the invitation.

Maybe there is a regional element at play here, I don't know anyone who would be offended by the evening only invite yet people on here seem to think it's the height of rudeness

Exactly Tammy - I had to find a much crappier venue than the ones I'd first looked at in order to fit everyone in. If we hadn't had such a big discrepancy I wouldn't have and we'd have had to have more evening guests.

Like most other things in life it's a compromise between what you want, your budget, what's actually available on the market, and the comfort of other people.

reallyorange are your parents having the wine too? That might make a difference. They are obviously a first tier if the have food and wine but in some respects wine is the more coveted item than food so friend is the higher tier if parents aren’t invited to have any

Skimming a bit but I’m at a loss to see how some people don’t understand different levels of friendship. You can be friends with someone but know you’re not in the first circle of friends, that’s life. We can’t all be best friends with everyone. I had work colleagues that I considered friends and who were lovely. But I also knew that I was down the list in comparison to friends they’d had since school etc. So an evening invitation makes absolute sense.

I had a big wedding and no evening invites btw, just how it worked out.

Evening-only invites are horribly rude, but the right thing to do is decline them. You don't fake ignorance and turn up for the whole thing.

It's clearly the friend's fault as he lost his invite and didn't check which bit he was actually invited to. Would be embarrassing to arrive early but at that point he should have either left for a bit or just eaten and paid for the meal. Did he maybe still not realise he wasn't invited to the whole thing? He should be really embarrassed. Hotel also shouldn't have allowed him to bill it to the bride and groom. Friend should now apologise and pay up.

Local friend should have checked with B&G before wedding if he’d lost invite to find out whether he was day or evening guest. Plus the moment he turned up and realised he wasn’t on seating plans should have realised he was not invited for the day and should been a little embarrassed for turning up early and definitely have sucked up the price of his meal, completely outrageous that he charged his meal to B&G!

Evening guests are s completely reasonable thing to do - weddings are so expensive. Lots of people I know have small number of people for wedding day then a big party in evening.

Omg what an arsehole

He loses invite
Asks another friend for details
Body swerves the ceremony and turns up for the grub
Orders himself a full meal and charges it with his drinks to bride and groom
Then argues the bride and groom have embarrassed him and he wasn't made welcome instead of apologising profusely for losing invite, not checking properly, not going to the ceremony when he thought he should and actually trying to get them to pay for his food and drink.

Fuck me, what a knob.

Bluntness as ever, sums it up

Assuming he’s paid by credit card, the hotel can still take the money for the meal, can’t they?

The person, who agreed to billing the meal to the b&g is an idiot.

Rather bluntly...🤣

But seriously. What appaling manners.

Local enough to count as local for invitation purposes but not local enough to get a cab home and took a room instead? I reckon they were challenging the designation of "local"

Local enough to count as local for invitation purposes but not local enough to get a cab home and took a room instead? I reckon they were challenging the designation of "local"

What difference would that make? He wasn't an evening guest because he was local, he was an evening guest due to Closeness to the couple and permitted numbers.

It's very common in Ireland to do all day invitations and then evening invitations but it's very clear which you've been invited to. The full day invitation will detail eg church at 12, champagne reception with canapés (if doing that) at 2, meal at 5. The evening invite wouldn't have that information and would clearly state from 8 pm or whatever, no room for confusion.

As pps have said the evening do would be to include wider family such as cousins, also neighbors, work colleagues, possibly a couple of siblings friends (or friends siblings!) etc and very often platters of food will be provided at 9 or 10 so everyone is well provided for.

While obviously anyone can attend the church bit if they want to, the church details wouldn't even be included on the evening invitation in my experience so zero expectation that people attend the ceremony and then piss off for hours until the evening bit. I've only ever seen that on MN tbh and it would be considered very odd here! I can see why people wouldn't be happy with that, especially if they've had to travel but other than that I think reference to "two tier" weddings is ridiculous. Surely most adults are actually closer to/friendlier with some people than others and therefore more likely to invite them to the full day? It doesn't have to be all or nothing, people are free to decline but deciding you've been snubbed by an evening invite is completely overthinking imo.

Mumsnet is the only place where I’ve EVER come across this weirdness about evening invitations. It’s standard. I’ve been to weddings all over the country and there are always evening guests.

It’s not rude in the slightest and I’ve never been offended to be an evening guest, I’m just happy to celebrate with the couple.

No difference to either guest's rudeness or hotel's apparent incompetence at charging expenses to someone else's room unauthorised, merely a comment on possible cause for the appalling behaviour. You chose your name well.