Not invited to wedding of a close friend’s daughter

[Jazzaloon]

I haven’t seen my friend for a while due to Covid but knew her daughter’s wedding was to take place this April. I was never told the date or the venue and assumed that perhaps the pandemic had altered their plans. I recently had a phone call during which she revealed that the wedding was in four days’ time, explaining away the fact I obviously hadn’t been invited by saying that she didn’t think I would want to come as I didn’t like that sort of thing. True in part, that I feel awkward at such events but I have met a lot of her family socially over the years who have always been welcoming and I would have liked to attend. We have been friends for over 30 years and I feel hurt that I was never on the guest list – and by this I mean for the evening reception not the ceremony or the wedding breakfast. As the wedding was to be held at a country house hotel some miles away there wasn’t even the opportunity to see the bride as she set off from home in her dress or arrived at the register office.

I know that as my friend is the one paying for everything on the big day she will have invited other friends to the evening reception. AIBU and should I just suck it up? At the moment I don’t feel I can meet up with this friend again, especially if it is to see photos of an event I wasn’t ever going to be a part of.

Thread is from August last year

APRIL 2022 THREAD

Also, the wedding was in 2022 so not sure why this has been revived again today.

It's been and gone

To be honest you don’t sound like a close friend if you didn’t know where or when the wedding even was!
If you do class yourself a close friend why haven’t you shown interest and asked these things over the past year etc?
If you hadnt then like your friend I would also assume that you weren’t interested enough to want to go.

I understand where you’re coming from.

I, too am socially awkward and big events are hard for me. Not being invited is upsetting, though, even if I probably WOULD have declined it would have been nice to feel welcomed.

I also hate when other people make decisions FOR me. Just tell me the plan and let ME decide what I can and can’t handle for myself!

So your friend probably meant well in assuming you wouldn’t want to attend this big event she knew might make you uncomfortable… but you CAN tell her how you feel! Tell her that it makes you feel unwelcome and unwanted to not even be invited - you know that she knows big events are hard for you, but she should let YOU decide for yourself if you can handle something or not.

Just explain how you feel and hopefully she will understand. 😊

This happened to my mother in the UK who had been friends with her BF for 60 years even though the BF had lived in Canada for 40 years. My mother had spent years sending birthday and Christmas presents to both of her children and knew them really well so when my parents weren’t invited to the daughter’s wedding, I was furious. I had invited all of them to both of mine and I feel this modern approach festering in my generation of only inviting your current friends and colleagues is wrong. The people who have helped nurture you and provide for you should be acknowledged with an invitation. What is the point of staying in touch if Dave from IT gets an invitation for switching it off and on again whilst Auntie Bessie who made a hell of a lot more effort than that gets overlooked and uninvited? It is shameful. If cost is an issue, drag heads out of la la land and hire somewhere cheaper. Relationships and history matter more than stupid Instagram shots and showing off to new acquaintances - because acquaintances are exactly what new ‘friends’ often prove themselves to be.

Go on then…. Tear me to pieces for not agreeing with you. 😂 OP knows I’m right. 🤣

@NotAMinute
I bowed to pressure to have MILs old friends at our wedding. Ah but we were invited too their kids...

15 years on I've never met or heard from. these people again. Complete and utter strangers to me. I don't even think DH would recognise any of them in the street.

We had limitations on the number of guests we could invite so we had to say no to my MIL that only a couple of the cousins she wanted us to invite would be able to come to the main reception. We did invite the others to the evening reception, though.

I did invite my DM’s oldest friend, but she was my friend, too, so that was fine. My DH invited his parents’ closest friends, too.

Other than that, it was all our own friends, and some of them could only be invited to the evening reception. (These were local friends from church and work colleagues.)

The problem is numbers, it’s impossible to invite everyone!

The problem is numbers, it’s impossible to invite everyone

In a nutshell that is the issue.
Weddings have never been cheap. It riles me that I find myself saying the same thing as my Dad, I don't want stranger's my kids don't know at their weddings.

The issue with this thread being posted by the OP, someone who feels she should have been invited but wasn't, is that we have no information about this wedding. If it had been posted by the bride to be, or the mother of the bride or the mother of the groom, we might know more.

For example:

The bride's parents are paying for everything, there are 150 all day guests and a further 50 evening guests, no hard limit on numbers, other parents' friends have been invited... maybe OP should have been invited and is being reasonable to feel upset.

Alternatively...

The couple are paying for everything, their budget is quite small, there are lots of family members who must be invited, they have already had to make the difficult decision not to invite some of their own good friends due to limits on numbers... totally reasonable that the OP didn't make the cut.

We just don't know.

Why are so many year old threads being resurrected?

We paid for my daughter's wedding last year. I invited my three best friends who have known her all her life. They were so happy to be involved. If, however, my daughter was paying I wouldn't have expected to to be invited. But probably not worth falling out over.

Yabu
And not close friends anymore
So even more U

I don't actually think it matters who is paying the Bride and Groom should not be getting introduced to strangers at their wedding.
I really wish I'd been stronger and said no.

There were a handful of people I'd never met at my wedding. One or two were the plus ones of friends we'd invited and a couple were relatives of my husband's that I hadn't met. I didn't mind because it didn't alter the overall balance of thr guest list. But we said no to my FIL inviting 40 of his friends for that reason, even though he offered to pay. We let him invite 5 or 6.

Wedding was over a year ago, in April 2022

The plus ones aren't the people who upset me nor are the Aunties & Uncles who I hadn't met before but I've met a few times since due to distance etc.

The people that really really annoy me are the table full of 'close friends' that bloody close they weren't even at SILs wedding 3 years after ours. Arrrr!

This is how long it takes me to finish this story. . So my mother was acting up because of the lack of invite when .....a few weeks after posting my original rant I found out my youngest brother had discovered his wife had been cheating. They were in the middle of counselling and trying to patch things up when a knock at the door one evening by her lover's ex wife revealed his wife was still cheating and had been privately investigated by the ex wife!!! So in reality my mother wasn't that bothered about the lack of wedding invitations at all - she was masking a much bigger problem and going through the stress of seeing their marriage implode alone and with no one to talk to. We haven't discussed the Canadian friend since and it has now been two years of trying to work out what on earth his ex wife was thinking. Even her parents do not understand. Goodnight everyone and thank you for not tearing me to pieces at the time. This site is such a sanctuary compared to X and Insta. Xxxx