This is another one of those things I only see on mumsnet.
Im mid 40s with a huge extended family, plus obviously friends and worked in lots of places - i.e. been invited to a lot of weddings, some years there seemed to be one every weekend of the summer. And in almost all of them there were separate evening guests - it’s not a new thing, this is going back decades. The exceptions were the few destination weddings.
Same as how the overwhelming majority were close family/ bridal party children only.
I’ve also only ever been to one with a completely open bar (yes that couple were much posher than the rest of us!)
We invited some people separately to the evening, we ensured they got a couple of drinks each and were well fed. Obviously only people who lived locally too. If they were offended they didn’t show it - but then for the majority of them I’d been an evening guest to their wedding so it would have been a bit hypocritical.
I’ve never taken offence at an evening invite and never been shocked like ‘I thought I was day invite worthy!’.
Plus the ‘just have a cheaper wedding and invite everyone’ - I don’t know what these mythical cheap as chips wedding venues where you can have hundreds of guests for the same price as a few extra evening invites. We actually looked at all the church and village hall type weddings and they worked out a lot more than we ended up paying in a nice venue (still a pub though!). But the maximum capacity for the day was 75 - apparently we should have given up a venue we loved, was affordable, local for most guests and provided amazing food and pub rather than hotel prices for drinks - for what? A leisure centre maybe? The local harvester? Bet you they would have worked out pretty pricey in the end, there really is no ‘cheap option’ unless you have no guests at all.