To scrap ‘evening’ invitations to weddings

[AgualusasLover]

I don’t really get it anyway as I come from a culture where you either invite people or you don’t.

BUT, putting that to one side, is this practice outdated now? More people get married further away making an evening invitation costly for what it is (according to what I read here anyway), often requiring travel and accommodation etc. For example, I’ve previously been invited to the evening portion of a wedding of someone I used to work with, we have coffee every so often etc. I couldn’t make the date anyway, but I would not have been offended to have not been invited since we aren’t close enough for ‘whole’ day.

Should we just scrap evening invitations?

I hate evening only invites - by the time you arrive everyone is both shitfaced and exhausted. My solution is to just not accept them. I don’t. Begrudge anyone wanting to send them though - it’s entirely up to them.

Yes, I’ve had fun at them too. Or declined the invitation if it was going to be too expensive or troublesome to attend, but appreciated the thought.

Yep, I got invited to an evening do in North Yorkshire at a golf club in the middle of nowhere by a colleague I work with in Central London. I drove up with another colleague to save costs, but that was several hours driving each way, hotel in the nearest village, taxis, and when we got there they hadn't organised any food or drinks for the evening "guests", literally just let the 2nd-tier acquaintances in once the bit they were paying for "per person' was done. Most of the people who'd been there all day were already inebriated to a point that made conversation difficult and I think we spoke to the groom for about 3 minutes.
I will never travel more than an hour for an evening do again.

I was once invited to an evening do 4 hours from home while my partner was invited to the whole day. That was a decline from me.

I'm getting married. The only people who are invited in the evening (and to the church) are local to us eg work colleagues, people we know through a hobby. The actual ceremony is open anyway as it's in a church (not everyone realises that) then as the venue has a far higher capacity than we need as a max, to be honest anyone we know is welcome.

I agree with you OP and we had no evening-only invites at our wedding as I hated the idea of classifying our friends into typeA who get a meal etc and typeB who only get a sausage roll ar 10pm. But I don't have any idea whether the practice is dying out.

I'd like to think the wedding industry will kill itself off eventually. All the traditional trummings are getting so expensive and guest lists get smaller to fit a limited budget and eventually you have a generation who have never been to a wedding as a guest and have no preconceptions of what it should be like so do something completely different and therefore much cheaper.

I always think evening guests liven up a tired party , there is no saying your day guest are going to stay on in the evening . It could be a wash out in the evening ,granny is not going to be the life and soul of the party .
Evening guests are usually young and bring a new fun element to the evening .
Your wedding could easily be a wash out without young fun guests .

eventually you have a generation who have never been to a wedding as a guest and have no preconceptions of what it should be like so do something completely different and therefore much cheaper.

Gosh - that’s such an interesting point. In all the “no kids at weddings” palaver you read about on here, that had never occurred to me: no kids at weddings means kids not growing up with that idea of “a proper wedding has x, y or z”. And if you’re not wedded to tradition, presumably a lot of the aspects of a wedding go down the pan. Interesting.

In fairness, this was a bit mad from you. An evening invitation is for cake and a dance, sometimes some form of buffet — it was really ever going to have been ‘worth’ driving halfway up the country, paying for accommodation, taxis etc, even if they’d given you sandwiches and wine!

Everyone invited to my wedding was invited to the whole day - ceremony, reception and meal, evening do. We said from the get go that we would do it that way and that was it. I find the two tier system quite insulting and I wouldn't accept an evening only invite unless it was very local.

Politicking at there being 'tiers' of guests is silly when there are 'tiers' of acquaintance. Immediate family, distant family, bury a body friends, close friends, good friends, work and hobby pals etc.

if you are 'evening tier' to one couple it isn't a comment on your intrinsic value or anything, you simply aren't close enough to be offered a day invitation (and that could be because they're having a tiny, family only, wedding, ceremony and breakfast).

I was an evening guest at a local wedding last year and whilst l was delighted to be there, would have felt quite intrusive being at the speeches and vows as I really didn't know the couple that well (it wasn't a church wedding which I know is open to the public).

If it hadn't been local I would have either declined or made a weekend of it if it had been somewhere I was interested in going anyway.

I think threads on the matter usually happen when people felt they were close enough to merit a full invitation (or invited the couple to their own full day). I don't think it's when local mates are asked to the evening party.

Why should there be a standard issue tradition?

I was once invited to a family wedding - evening only.
It was an adults only destination wedding.
Yes of course I am going to fly for a couple of hours to go to a 3 hr party without my children and nobody to look after them because all my child free relatives got whole day invites.
I didn't go.

An evening invitation is no more insulting than no invitation at all. Less so in fact.

Unless you have a high sense of self importance.

I don't think there is anything wrong with more guests in the evening per se as long as they are catered for and are local. It doesn't work as a model for country house type weddings where people are having guests to pay to stay somewhere. We went to one recently where there was no adequate food food in the evening g and people were paying for all their own drinks.

Now that is just thoughtless but pretty extreme!

You can’t just decide something like evening guests should be scrapped because it’s not the done thing in your culture and you personally don’t like it.

That would be as silly as me saying all weddings should have evening only guests because that’s how weddings were when I grew up. Used to love it as a teenager when someone from the villages invitation arrived and it was evening only - got the dancing and nice frock bit, but didn’t have to do the boring hanging about bits or the inevitable chicken with either white wine or mushroom sauce.

Evening invitations have a totally different thought process in some places. To me I was always brought up with them being “we can’t afford and don’t have the space for everyone but we’d love you to come to the bit we can afford to have everyone” rather than some sort of insult.

I did the same - but then neither my DH nor I were “locals” to where we lived (if that makes sense!). But my DDs have lived in the same house all their lives; I could easily imagine a scenario where, if they wanted a traditional “from home” wedding, it’d be a nice thing to ask the neighbours or some of the older people in the community/parents of friends she’s known all her life to come for a drink and a buffet in the evening. As I’ve said, where people are local, they know others also joining the party at that point (and there is actually a party laid on for them, not just the dregs of the day “do”), it can be a really nice thing to do.

Knowing my cousin like I do, I actually think she was trying to be helpful, thinking a shorter time =less childcare.
The logistics probably didn't enter her head.

That was my point. Lesson learned - never doing it again.

Totally one for those getting married, nobody else. No friends input, no family input.

It depends.
We have a relative who told us we're weren't important enough to her to invite us to the main wedding reception die to cost but we were welcome to attend the church. So DH was expected to tail up, to travel into central London. We were then expected to lose ourselves from 3pm until 7.30pm when our inferior selves could have the honour of attending an evening party. Meanwhile we'd have been paying the babysitter for the privilege of not being invited to the main reception.

The rudest bit was that MIL was expected to attend the wedding alone, including hundreds of miles of travel. It was at the same church as her own wedding, the first family event since her husband of more than 45 years had dropped dead and there was no thought for her situation.

If there are people as thoughtless as that particular relative then I think the practice should cease.

We were then expected to lose ourselves from 3pm until 7.30pm when our inferior selves could have the honour of attending an evening party

This sort of thing is awful and definitely does give evening invitations a bad name…..

I do think that unless you are having a ‘local’ wedding, ie you live/work/socialise in the area where you are holding your wedding reception, then the social pressure to have an evening do (and to accept invitations to attend) is really outdated. Anyone used to be able to go to the church part and could then go home and come to the party later because it was in the village/town where everyone lived.

But now that brides often live a long way from their families (who used to ‘host’) and posh venues are continually used instead, I think clinging on to the obligation to open up the evening event to everyone you know is just an anachronism fuelled by the wedding industry who are in it to make money. Either invite them to the whole day or keep it small and intimate.

I guess my view is that if you don’t know the couple well then you shouldn’t really be at their wedding.

I do think inviting loads of work friends (unless genuine friends) and people you barely know is ridiculous. I’d rather focus my time and money on spending the day with family and good friends.

I think there can be a place for them for people who live close and would come in a large group (work colleagues, sports teams, neighbours etc)