AIBU to think friendship is over if I am uninvited to a wedding?

[Borisisuseless]

School friend who I used to see regularly in 2019 and previously was due to get married in late 2020. We used to talk about the wedding all the time in 2019 and it was very clear me and DP were invited (down to discussing what I would do with my then unborn child as it was a child free wedding). Seen a lot less of her in 2020 due to pandemic (we live an hour’s drive away) and I had a baby in early 2020. Wedding got postponed to late 2021 due to covid.

I felt like I was putting more effort into staying in touch and trying to arrange meet ups than her during the last year or so and she started becoming more and more vague when I asked about the wedding. A few weeks ago when I still hadn’t received an invitation I started thinking something was up but tried to maintain my usual chatty contacts. Eventually she asked to ring me and pretty much told me the wedding is smaller with only family and good friends (huh? I thought I was a good friend?!).

I didn’t say much because really what can you say, but we then caught up on other things - but obviously I have been feeling very hurt about this since that conversation and am not sure where to go from here. I strongly suspect our mutual friend (we have always met up and travelled as a 3) will be going - they live in the same town and have continued to meet regularly through the pandemic as they could meet outside for walks etc more easily so maybe they have remained close. I don’t want to put other friend in an awkward position by asking her outright if she is going or not but my gut tells me she is and our other friend is phasing me out of our friendship.

AIBU to think the friendship is effectively over? At this point I don’t feel like reaching out or making an effort to see her but maybe with some more time I will want to do this? Has anyone’s friendship survived this? I would 100% have invited her to my wedding (which also won’t be huge) but now I would feel foolish doing this as she has uninvited me from hers. Am not sure if I just continue to meet with other friend alone now without friend who appears to have dumped me? Just a bit confused as nothing changed from my side except a pandemic and a baby so a bit bewildered about what happened here?

I'd see what she does from here. Be polite but stop doing all the running. But in all honesty it would change how I felt about her, particularly of the other friend is still invited.

@londonrach yes good idea to send a card as it’s a nice thing to do (hopefully she doesn’t see this as needy or desperate!)

@burnoutbabe yes she did specifically say it will be just family and close friends - so that did sting. We used to make equal effort, now it is me doing the running

The weekend away thing doesn't sound good. Does mutual friend have children? Sometimes people react weirdly to friends when they have babies - it's like they see you differently. I definitely lost some friends when I had a child and I really didn't see it coming because I still felt like me.

@Keladrythesaviour that’s a really interesting perspective that I hadn’t considered, thank you - although I think I might struggle to actually feel that way. Certainly would save a lot of heartache if I could come around to that way of thinking.

@GoWalkabout if it was just me who had had a baby I would agree - but our other mutual friend had a baby the year before me, in 2019 - yet their friendship has continued apparently just fine. (Getting-married friend does not want children).

Are you saying that if you aren't in someone's top 10 friends list then you don't want to be their friend at all? Is that true for everyone you spend time with?

Some people are lucky to be part of a close-knit small group of friends where everyone likes everyone else equally and you would all list each other as among your top 10 best friends. That's nice when it happens but doesn't happen for everyone.

For others, you'll have a less interconnected network with various friends some of whom know each other and some don't, and of course it's perfectly normal that person A might consider person B as one of their closest friends, and with no disrespect or lack of friendship whatsoever person A might like person B very much but just happen to have other friends too who would be considered closer. Taking offense at such eventualities is silly. She likes you and considers you a friend and that doesn't need to change just because you aren't the closest friend she's got. My wedding (decades ago) had 120 guests. If there had been a pandemic and I'd had to trim the guest list down to 30 it would have been gut wrenching to cut down, we would have gone with 10 from his family, 10 from mine and 10 friends, prioritising friends who we were both close to. That would leave at least 30 friends from the original guest list "uninvited". If any of those 30 took it as an insult not to have been chosen as one of the top 10 that would say a lot more about their own self-centredness than about me.

If you were already feeling that the friendship was a bit one sided with you doing all the running, I think I'd simply stop doing all the running. If she wants to see you then she'll make the effort. I'd just make equal effort. The same with the mutual mummy friend. As for you hosting, invite who you'd normally invite, if she chooses to attend then great, if not don't let it bother you.

I had a friendship of over 20 years. Moved away from A city to live coincidentally ten minutes from her. She was keen to have a friendship for the couple of months when she needed a huge favour from me that saved her thousands of pounds. But then her communication completely dropped off. I got fed up with being the one to contact her, only to be ghosted or told she'd get back to me and then never did. It got to the point where I hadn't seen her for a year and our kids hadn't seen each other for two years.

She then suddenly sent me a "save the date" for her child's 8th birthday party and put me in a WhatsApp group for it. I replied the next day saying it was in the diary.

She then messaged me to say that everyone else had replied to the save the date to say they could come, and therefore she had reached the maximum numbers allowed and my children weren't invited anymore!!!! This wasn't even in response to an actual invite, it was a save the date only at that point. The party was at their huge mansion house and when I looked at the party people's website who she had subcontracted to run part of the party, it turned out she could add an extra five kids for £20. So she lied. And also half the party was just "outdoor games" at her huge house and garden, so if she was genuinely restricted on numbers with the first part, I'm sure she could have said "come along to the games part".

I was pretty pissed off. Decided to wait to see how long it would be until SHE contacted ME for a meet up for the first time ever...it's been two years now.

I've found out she has "form" for this; she didn't invite one of her best friends to her own 40th birthday party!

She is now a former friend.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously yes the mutual friend has one DD (she is one and done, whereas I will have two soon) and getting-married friend doesn’t want them. I could understand it more if it was only me having kids and they were both child-free.

@awholenewworlda that sounds really shitty, sorry, but you are well shot of her

Don't be offended. Maybe she can't afford to invite more people this time? Wedding prices have rocketed since covid. She could be embarrassed she can't afford more guests.
Either way it does sound like you've drifted apart, maybe time to focus on making new friends?

@Movingsoon21 nice to hear a perspective from the getting-married side and sorry you are in this position. You never quite know what financial position people are in but my friend comes from a wealthy family and also is a very good earner herself (albeit she is house hunting currently) so I doubt it is for financial reasons in her case - but of course you never know

@Borisisuseless thank you. Yes it was a really shitty thing to do. On top of a couple of years of being a poor friend. But it was really upsetting, so I posted really to let you know that I know how hurtful it is when this sort of thing happens from "friends" you've known for a long time and/or thought you were close to.

You do seem a bit overinvested in this for an adult. It’s only a wedding. Friendships wane and ebb and flow. Some v good friends of mine didn’t come to my wedding and visa verses but as life changed we became closer again. It seems a bit extreme to say you’re not friends any longer!

She may well be feeling left out now that you’ve had a baby. You admitted you’d not met up much. And if numbers smaller you didn’t make the cull.

@Gillyx I didn’t realise about places charging £10k to postpone a wedding, that is a lot of cash, so I can see why scaling down would be necessary then. Although they have deliberately never mentioned the word wedding in all their bookings to keep costs down, aren’t doing the big white dress thing, they have just booked a venue for a dinner/party, so might not have been as heavily penalised for postponing the event

So she's uninvited you from her wedding, and mutual friend hasn't invited to you to her big birthday weekend. Personally I'd be stepping away, and I would wait a while before organising 'your turn'. In fact I probably would leave it altogether and start focussing on other friendships. Sounds like you've been putting all the effort in for a while.

I’ve been in the exact same situation and pretty much ended our friendship because I thought we were close friends. After I started to plan my own wedding, I realised what a horrible and selfish person I was to act that way, because I saw how hard it is to plan a wedding with limited seats, and I was going to have 200 guests! I really regret the way I behaved and have tried to rebuild things but the damage is done.

Please don’t be like me.

Oddly, the weekend of her wedding which I missed because I was relegated to evening only is when I met my husband, so it’s hard to regret not going to her wedding altogether, but that’s a separate point.

I think you deserve better friends who value you and are inclusive.

@Loudestcat14

Lots of people decided to scale back their weddings because of Covid, so you not making the final guest list isn't necessarily a sign she doesn't want to be friends. She rang you to tell you herself when, let's face it, she could've just texted or even ghosted you. That can't have been an easy call to make. So yes, it hurts, but I don't know that I'd write her off just yet.

This. Don’t write off an otherwise good friendship due to this.

Some of my own friendships have benefited positively and negatively by not seeing or seeing people during Covid-19 too.

It’s a difficult one. Based on the wedding alone, I’d have said not to give up on the friendship, as a lot of people have had to cut back on numbers post-Covid. However, the weekend away would bother me more. If you’re regularly meeting as a three (as the taking turns in organising seems to suggest), it does seem like you’ve been somewhat sidelined.

Maybe play it cool for a while and don’t make any great effort to take your turn at organising the get-together. They’ll either get in touch to find out what’s happening, or they won’t bother - and at least you’ll know.

@SinoohXaenaHide I don’t have one big group of friends or even a large number of friends total but select good friends from different times in my life (just 1 from primary school, 3 from senior school, 2 from university, a few from a job I had in my 20s and a few from a job I had in my 30s. I have lived around a bit and worked overseas for a few years and friendships I made there have faded. I moved to a new area after having DD and have put a lot of effort into making friends with other new mums locally but it takes time for these friendships to grow, especially when we could only meet outside for walks during covid and I don’t consider any of them good friends yet. So I have continued to try to keep up with my old friends as well as making new ones - but it has been a very lonely and isolating period (and I am pregnant and emotional again) so I may well be taking this rejection too personally.

I have known getting-married friend for 28 years and we have shared many memories at school, travels in adulthood and special occasions together as well as the mundane stuff like weekly swims and dinners. So it just hurts to know I consider her a close friend but she doesn’t consider me the same necessarily.

I do still want to be friends with her on many levels (despite currently feeling very wounded) but not if she doesn’t feel the same about me

Orangejuicemarathoner

I think you are the one being a bad friend here.

What a strange and cruel thing to say to someone who feels a bit sad about being uninvited to a friends wedding.

@Jangle33 yes friendships do ebb and flow (at least the shorter term ones do in my experience - like friends you meet when on a year long job contract - you often don’t have much in common once you no longer work together) - but good solid long term friendships and all those memories take years or decades to build so aren’t easily replaceable (so I am gutted if this is the beginning of the end with a friend I have spent a lot of time with over 28 years)

Not meeting much over the pandemic was more her than me - I would suggest a date and she would be “busy” for a couple of months so would drag it out as long as poss before seeing me (which I put down to covid anxiousness - she would want to meet outside even though it was freezing) - or once we had a date she would postpone at the last minute as she was too upset because she lost a house she was wanting to buy, and then be too “busy” to meet for another 2 months - so between excuses and lockdowns, the gaps were long. In hindsight all these things added together are not good signs.

The planned weekend away is going to be a few weeks after my 2nd child is due - not sure if they arranged it for then because it was convenient or because they knew it would definitely mean I wouldn’t be able to come). So another not good sign :-(

I think you're being a bit unreasonable here. Surely the weekend is planned around mutual friend's 40th birthday date? If it were a few weeks before your due date or several months after, would you have been ok to go?

My advice is to lower your expectations but to still be open to a friendship with the bride. As someone else said, friendships don't have to be all or nothing. She's in a difficult situation having to trim guest numbers and as you haven't seen much of each other it seems reasonable that others will take precedence.

I think however this friendship will fade naturally as you have 2 children and she doesn't intend to have any. Having DC means your life will be dominated by them, and you will naturally make new friends through them. My DC are adults now and all of my close friends I met through them when they were little. My pre children friends all faded away. No bad feelings just different priorities.