AIBU to find it strange that husband is invited to wedding without me

[Battyasacat]

My husband has been invited to one of his employees wedding, she has worked at his company for 20 years. The invite just has his name on the envelope and there is no name inside just a printed card. He replied online but it seems like it is just for him.It’s all day
We have been married for 40 years and would have never done this despite being on a low budget at the time.
.

Ugh, a prime example of the type of people I can't stand - those who hide behind outdated etiquette rules because it makes them think they are somehow better - news flash, it doesn't! But bless you for thinking it does 🤣🤣🤣

I might cry myself to sleep tonight because an old fogey implied I was 'tacky' on the Internet...NOT! 🙄😆

LMAO, “outdated etiquette rules” is a very dramatic way of saying basic consideration for your guests. Etiquette isn’t a legal code and nobody thinks following it makes them morally superior. It’s literally just a collection of social conventions designed to avoid making other people feel awkward or unwelcome. You’re perfectly free to ignore them, just as everyone else is perfectly free to think the result is tacky. That’s the bit you seem to be struggling with.

And considering you’ve now written an entire paragraph complete with “bless you,” multiple laughing emojis, an eye-roll, and an imaginary scenario about crying yourself to sleep because a stranger called something tacky, I’m not entirely convinced you’re achieving the devastating level of indifference you think you are. Nobody said you have to care what I think. You very clearly do, though, or we wouldn’t still be here. But sure, keep furiously explaining how completely unbothered you are. It’s extremely convincing. 😭

Chill out - we are talking about whether or not its weird to invite people you dont know to a wedding not world peace 🤣. Lots of people have said they would be perfectly fine going to a wedding on their own, its not a big deal to many people, i am hardly a lone voice on the thread. If you want to be joined at the hip to your husband and offended about something so minor, you do you. Thankfully we are unlikely to ever cross paths, so who gives a monkeys really. I am happy to agree to disagree - still laughing though because its amusing how triggered you are over what is to most people a minor issue. Each to their own ✌️

“Chill out” and “you’re triggered” after repeatedly coming back to tell me how “Chill out” and “you’re triggered” after repeatedly coming back to tell me how little you care is actually hilarious. I’m perfectly calm, I just think deliberately excluding someone’s spouse from a wedding invitation is rude. You disagree. That’s fine. Nobody said spouses need to be “joined at the hip,” and repeating that phrase doesn’t magically turn it into my argument. I regularly do things without my husband. I simply think a wedding invitation to one half of an established married couple should generally include the other half. Apparently that opinion has caused you considerably more emotional distress than it has me.

And yes, plenty of people on Mumsnet agree with you, but post the same question on a non-British site and I’d bet the replies would look very different. That doesn’t make either side universally right. It just means wedding etiquette varies by culture, which is basically the point buy the increasingly frantic insistence that you’re “still laughing,” “don’t give a monkey’s,” are “happy to agree to disagree,” and are so relieved we’ll never meet is doing an extraordinary amount of work for someone who supposedly finds this completely insignificant. You don’t have to convince me you’re unbothered. You can demonstrate it by, you know, being unbothered. ✌️

That's a very long message for someone claiming to be less bothered than me 🤣 and to mock my laughing emojis when starting your message with 'LMAO'...hypocrite much?! 😏 You are actually a hoot, its been an amusing interaction but as I said you do you.

Lol, so you now announced that you “don’t care,” are “still laughing,” "relieved we’ll never meet" have told me “you do you” repeatedly, and yet here you are again. 😂 At this point your repeated declarations of how unbothered you are are longer than the original argument and no, genius, I wasn’t mocking you for the existence of laughing emojis. I was mocking the increasingly desperate performance of insisting you’re absolutely hysterical and totally unaffected while apparently being physically incapable of shutting the fuck up about my opinion. There’s a difference. You’ve attempted your grand exit about four times now and somehow keep wandering back through the door. If you genuinely “don’t give a monkey’s” what I think, perhaps stop writing me increasingly defensive posts explaining exactly how little you care. “You do you” works considerably better when you actually leave. 😂🤣😏🙄🤭✌️💅😂🤣😌🙃😏🥱👏😂🤣🙄💀✌️💅

@pinck LMAO, “outdated etiquette rules” is a very dramatic way of saying basic consideration for your guests. Etiquette isn’t a legal code and nobody thinks following it makes them morally superior. It’s literally just a collection of social conventions designed to avoid making other people feel awkward or unwelcome

The problem with this though, is that etiquette shifts over time and creates grey areas. It becomes a Venn diagram of sorts and the wedding invite is a great example of this.

To parallel, my grandparents (and I’m not young so they were born well over a hundred years ago) believed social etiquette was women wearing dresses with stockings and men without fail wearing a hat when they went out plus a whole raft of stuff you do/don’t do when visiting someone or having someone to visit which I guarantee you wouldn’t do. None of this was ‘fashion’ but etiquette, the collection of social conventions. I know women wearing pants made my grandmother deeply uncomfortable and to do so when ‘going out’ was, to them also deeply disrespectful (that was their phrase for ‘tacky’). Did everyone have to wear dresses, stockings and hats forever more because a group of people in the Venn diagram considered that otherwise it breached etiquette, was scandalous in terms of social conventions, and it made them uncomfortable? Of course not, because etiquette shifts and there will be those that are uncomfortable with that in and of itself on the way.

Why is it strange to go to a church wedding without your spouse?

Why are we comparing your grandmother being scandalized by women wearing trousers to the etiquette of respecting someone else’s wedding invitation? 😂 Those are not remotely the same thing. Fashion conventions change. Women stopped wearing stockings everywhere, men stopped putting on hats every time they left the house, and civilization somehow staggered onward.

Yes, etiquette evolves too, but “etiquette changes” is not a magical phrase that makes every expectation you personally dislike obsolete. We still RSVP. We still don’t bring people who weren’t invited. We still don’t show up whenever the hell we feel like it. We still generally accept that when someone else is hosting and paying for an important event, their reasonable expectations take precedence over our desire to declare ourselves the brave pioneers of a new social order.

So no, Grandma clutching her pearls because Susan wore slacks to lunch does not establish that disregarding a wedding invitation is simply etiquette “evolving.” 😂 Sometimes a social convention genuinely becomes outdated. Sometimes you’re just being rude and have constructed a Venn diagram elaborate enough to make yourself feel intellectually vindicated about it. 🤷‍♀️

Why are we comparing your grandmother being scandalized by women wearing trousers to the etiquette of respecting someone else’s wedding invitation? 😂 Those are not remotely the same thing. Fashion conventions change. Women stopped wearing stockings everywhere, men stopped putting on hats every time they left the house, and civilization somehow staggered onward

Because, while you try and dodge around it and badge it as fashion, it’s not. That’s etiquette and social convention and is EXACTLY the same as the wedding invite issue. So, RSVP’ing and not bringing additional people, and fronting up in a white replica bridal dress would be in the central overlap of the Venn diagram, but inviting workmates spouses would not be, that would be in the non overlap section and when times move on and things shift it’s these non overlap areas that change the most and some will choose to work with them and some will not.

So, for that parallel example, our core overlap would still be that people wear clothing, they don’t go out in the nude, but the non overlap area of what that clothing involves has shifted but is still grey in that some people believe people should be able to wear what they want in public even if that involves a micro skirt with thing up the crack, whereas others believe etiquette dictates there should be a certain modesty where people can’t see what you had for breakfast when you bend over. Technically, neither is right or wrong as the core of ‘clothing’ has been fulfilled and the rest becomes grey. Similarly, for the wedding, while rsvp’ing is still core, the need to invite work colleague spouses is not, that has moved into the non core grey area and is neither right or wrong.

You’ve basically invented a Venn diagram, put the etiquette rules you personally agree with in the “core” circle, put the ones you don’t like in the “grey area,” and then announced that this proves your conclusion. 😂 That isn’t an argument, it’s color-coding your opinion.

And no, “people used to think women should wear stockings” still does not establish that excluding someone’s spouse from a social invitation is EXACTLY the same thing. One concerns changing standards of personal dress. The other concerns how we treat other people and their established relationships when inviting them to an event. You can keep insisting they’re identical in capital letters, but the capital letters are doing considerably more work than the logic.

The funniest part is that you’ve simply declared inviting spouses “non-core” and therefore neither right nor wrong, which is the exact thing being debated. You don’t get to resolve the argument by moving the disputed issue into the convenient grey section of your homemade diagram and saying, “See? Grey!”

Etiquette does evolve. Nobody disputed that. The disagreement is over whether this particular convention has actually changed to the point that excluding a colleague’s husband or wife is now generally considered perfectly normal. “Some etiquette has changed over time” does not prove “therefore this specific piece of etiquette has changed.” Otherwise I can declare literally any courtesy I find inconvenient to be an exciting new frontier of social evolution.

Also, I’m crying at the journey from “should spouses be invited to weddings?” to your grandmother’s stockings, public nudity, micro skirts and apparently being able to see what somebody had for breakfast. This Venn diagram has become a crime scene. 💀

You’ve basically invented a Venn diagram, put the etiquette rules you personally agree with in the “core” circle, put the ones you don’t like in the “grey area,” and then announced that this proves your conclusion

No, I think if you read the whole thread and see all responses, it’s pretty obvious where it sits in the Venn.

ETA - it’s definitely not a ‘my opinion’ Venn. If it was I’d have it looking very different. Such as no excluding children in the ‘Core’, but that is indeed just my opinion and my want. I don’t reinvent rules because of what I want. Inviting children belongs in the non-overlap section, neither right nor wrong, even if I don’t like it🤷‍♀️

Mn feels and the whole sum of some people's lives is weddings, kids birthday parties and school parent dramas

Do people not have a life outside all this angst ie jobs, hobbies, sport, normal friends? There is a big wide world out there

I have been to a couple of weddings without my husband. I am not joined at the hip. I have been married for 35 years.

Has a single person I do find the horror at being invited to a wedding without one’s husband or wife a little funny.

To me it feels weak - like someone isn’t capable of making small talk or sitting through a church service without their significant other. In this case most adults would check with their colleagues who is going and decide if they want to attend.

OP sounds very traditional and set in her ways. She seems to have almost taken this personally. If her husband doesn’t want to go to the wedding he politely declines - while OP seems obsessed with the (dated) etiquette of spousal invitations, she seems to have missed the fundamental meaning of an invitation.

And for Gods sake a wedding is a celebration of the couples love and happiness - not the guests! If it was only happily married people would be allowed to attend a wedding - certainly one way to drastically reduce the guest list😊

LOL @Bellyblueboy you do have a good point. I think some married couples - not all - do become rather dependent on each other. Although I think one of them is usually more needy and dependent than the other.

It used to be women that were lost without their man/needed them, especially financially, but these days, I think it's the men who struggle without their woman. Not all of course, but some.

My DH wouldn't know where to turn if I left him, and rarely goes out without me, and would NEVER go to a wedding without me. (I would go without him, as I am more confident than him.) I think this may be moreso men who are older - say, 50+, but yeah, IME some men (50+) do struggle without their wife, and would be lost if she died/left him.

DH and I are both in our 50s obvs

.

I can understand the interpretation that people not wanting to attend a wedding without their spouse being construed as a horror because they cannot socialise without each other but I genuinely think that applies to very few people.

I think the real issue is what goes into attending a wedding (possibly time off work, costs including travel, a hotel, new outfit, gift, drinks at an expensive venue etc) and for some, if they're spending that much money they want to be able to enjoy it with the person they most enjoy spending time with.

My husband and I do our own things, and support each other in that, but we very rarely get to spend hundreds of pounds on going out, so, if we are doing that, or using some of our very limited annual leave, we want it to be together.

I do not think the majority of people in the world have great manners so I’m not terribly surprised. 😳

Good for you.

🤣

OP sounds like the cranky old aunt nobody likes but feels they have to invite 😂😂😂