When is it polite to leave??

[WeddingPedding]

I'm attending a wedding, I really don't want to go.

Ceremony starts at 2.30pm
Speeches & food 6pm
"Games" and music 8pm
Special fun hour 12pm-1am

It's been expressed bride wants everyone to stay until 1am

When can I leave while being polite? Do I have to stay until 1am?

If you don't know anyone and weren't allowed a +1, sod that, go home after the first dance. You have to feed the cat/have work in the morning/a long drive home/do a French exit.

@WeddingPedding I'll be your "emergency call" at this rate 😂

My migraines come on at the worst times, right? Such a shame. Gutted to go. You look beautiful, it's been wonderful, byebyebye, bu-bye.

This is the one.

8pm? So 5.5hrs. Doable.

The last wedding I attended with a special midnight surprise turned out to be a rather good chip van - it was a nice surprise but not worth hanging around for. Nothing ever is at a wedding, only the couple is that excited about everything.

Oh FFS! I am so sick of these tedious Marathon type weddings. I went to 2 last year - June and October - midday to midnight, and 1pm to midnight! Such hard work. Tedious and boring. Went on forever. So many big long gaps where you're just hanging around.

The gap between the ceremony and the 'wedding breakfast,' and the gap between the wedding breakfast and the night do dragged like fuk. The second gap was from 4pm to 7.30pm. My God it was hard work.

Unless it's one of my DC, I am going to politely decline any more invitations to weddings from now on. Seriously, I CBA!

@WeddingPedding Leave when you want (maybe an hour into the night do or just after the cake cutting.) What a fuking bridezilla. Insisting everyone stays til 1am. Silly mare. Most people won't!

It makes me grateful that I'm old enough that all my mates got married back in the Dark Ages, when you'd have a ceremony at about 11, be sitting down to lunch by 1, the speeches would be over by 2.30/3 and if you had a long drive home nobody minded too much if you left then rather than waiting to wave the happy couple off (having helped to adorn their car with tin cans, shaving foam etc) at 3.30/4.

We once did a 10-hour round trip to a wedding in a single day. Got to the wedding on time, stayed to end, had a blast, were home by 10/11pm.

Mingle 😥

📞@WeddingPedding oh no an emergency..... Come home 🤫😬
Pjs Netflix cuppa sorted 😂

Can't think of anything worse than an extended wedding that has forced fun and games. I would either not go or leave early.

Thank god. I'll put the phone call on speakerphone to make it 'genuine'.

Don't break character

Make it a good, urgent emergency

@WeddingPedding 😂
I'm with you a few years ago I added 25+ weddings in the same year.....

Fuck that - I'd find the gift table drop my card and go. We were invited to a wedding like this once it was exruciating. Another one we went off into town with a whole group and had pizzas and drinks and almost didn't go back at all. I prefer it when they do the photos first, then the ceremony, food speeches cut cake first dance keep things moving

Yep! Everyone arrived at the wedding venue for 11.30am, (for the ceremony at midday.) About 40 photos were taken before, and about 20-30 after. Around 12.30pm the bride and groom went to a nice location to have their wedding pics taken on their own, and were back for about 1.15pm.

Then we all had a meal at a pub or restaurant. Went on til about 3pm. (The speeches were about half two followed by the cake cutting,) then everyone went home, and came back out to the night do/disco at a local social club or village hall, (disco, buffet, party.) 7pm to midnight or 1pm.

You could just go to the wedding and reception, or go to the night do as well. Virtually everyone invited lived within 20-30 minutes walking distance or a 10-15 minute drive/taxi ride from the wedding venue, and reception, and night do venue. Hen do and stag do was the previous weekend. Pub crawl. No 5 day trip to Croatia, costing a 4 figure sum!

@WeddingPedding I was there in a "role", not a guest and not staff of the bride but crikey long days of smiling & nodding at ppl you will probably never see again

Fuck that, I was asleep by midnight on my own wedding day.

Any mention of an enforced fun hour or activity would ensure I'm long gone by then. I'd want to leave by 9 but would stretch to 10. Any compulsory staying until 1am is insane, I'd be asleep under a table.

Why? I would stay till 1am at a wedding I wanted to go to.

@UniqueFish I had to google bongo bingo 👀 what the actual....?! I had never heard of that. That looks like my idea of Hell

If you don't want to go, don't. But have the decency to let them know so they could perhaps give your place to someone else who would like to attend.

I'd have hated to think someone attended my wedding even though they didn't want to.

😂😂this made me lol, you’ve never been to an Irish wedding…1am is early 🫣

The bride won't even notice that you've left early.
What a ridiculous schedule.
She sounds delusional.
Gotta say I feel sorry for the groom.

I'm intrigued by the special late night fun. Are they offering everyone cocaine?
Y'all will need it.

Who is this person in relation to you? I have been to weddings as a single person when I have known anyone except the bride and it's been absolutely bloody miserable.

I would have declined the invitation but as you've accepted why not go to the church and then go home.

For all our sakes you need to stay until the end and then report back on what on earth ‘Special Fun Hour’ entails. (Or just quietly disappear after the first dance)

The comment I actually made was that my mum is odd and a recluse. She passes for normal in the confines of her own kitchen, but anything beyond the place where “Why Should I” reigns shows it up very quickly.

She has lost: seeing her youngest child get married; seeing the house her daughter built; the benefits of healthcare; her siblings funeral; every circle of relationship to the point why her own children presume that even they are an endurance to her.
She has the life you claim to want - so why don’t you tell me. Would it make you happy.