Friend assuming wedding invite despite not inviting me to hers the same year..

[wedding27]

I'm curious what people think is more important with wedding invites: inviting those who have invited you, vs inviting full friendship / family groups so no one is left out.

We have recently decided to get married next year and have just started letting friends and family know.

I am part of a group of 6 very close friends (20+ years, meet every few months, always attend major life events etc) and one of the others is also getting married next year. She has been planning the wedding for 6 months and although I initially took if for granted I'd be invited (don't think I said this to her, just thought it) it's slowly dawned on me that I am not. It's a big wedding venue and local so not really an issue of space.

Despite going to the engagement party, there were lots of weird hints over the 6 months that I wasn't invited but the real kicker was discovering from one of the other women in the group that there has been a hen do WhatsApp for months and it's now all booked. So I was quite sad but accepted we maybe aren't as close as I thought and that was that.

I then awkwardly had to tell her we were also getting married next year. I didn't give anything away about the date, who was invited, size of wedding etc. just to try and keep my options open. However, she immediately assumed she was invited and started talking about how excited she was and how much she was looking forward to it(!!) So then I started thinking: Have I got the wrong end of the stick about the hen do somehow?! But lo and behold the save the dates have already gone out and I haven't received one. I asked her directly and she has confirmed we are evening only, her rationale being that she's not inviting our group except one women who is an exception.

But why would she assume she's coming to mine?!
I guess it's because we are a level of closeness that she has taken it as a given she would be invited, as had I with hers initially! But it doesn't feel very fair.

Ultimately I am inviting this group of friends. One of them is even going to be a bridesmaid. I don't really want to exclude just one person from the group but this feels a bit bizarre and quite cheeky. It's mainly the hen do I'm upset about to be honest, because obviously as an evening guest I'm completely excluded from that whereas she would be coming to mine a month or two later..

AIBU?

If her wedding was 6 months after yours or a year after yours you wouldn’t know if she was planning to invite you to the wedding.
So I would go with what you want to do, if you wanted to invite her personally as a friend to your wedding go ahead if you only felt obliged to invite her as part of the friendship group then don’t invite her. We had very close engaged couple friends who came to our small wedding, friendship cooled after they moved away and we lost touch. I saw on social media they had eloped to get married. Good for them doing things the way they wanted to. Do I regret inviting them because we obviously weren’t as close as I thought ( and they didn’t have a wedding to invite us to) not at all, I think of them with fondness on the rare occasion I get my weddings photos out.

I would only invite her to your evening do. Her assumption of being invited to yours is very cheeky. Weddings are expensive. Why do you want to waste some of your budget on someone who has shown you that you aren't important to her?

Ooh. I'd be telling the others they aren't invited to her wedding day, if they think they are!

If/when she brings up your wedding just say "oh we haven't finalised the guest list yet" & then change the subject.
And as your wedding is local an evening invite would be easy enough for her to attend. She is entitled to think that she deserves a full invite to yours but you are relegated to an evening only invite for hers.

So just invite her to YOUR evening event, like she's invited you to hers. Problem solved. You're not excluding her, you're just matching her energy.

Admittedly I don’t know much about wedding politics in the UK but can’t you just ask?

I wouldn't be too bothered about it tbh. Yes it's a bit weird she's presuming she's invited when she's not inviting you but maybe you've talked about it in your group about how one is a bridesmaid or your other friends have mentioned it to her? Could be a whole number of things.

Idk, I'm sure that I have a few friends who are way more important to me than I am to them. It's just the way it is. If you're inviting that group to the whole thing and it would be strange to exclude her then just do that and enjoy your day, no worrying about if she's upset etc.

OP has said that they are a very close group of friends who have known each other for over 20 years and have always attended each other's life events. It does sound churlish for OP's friend to exclude all these friends from her wedding apart from one, particularly as she has a big budget and a very small family.

OP would be perfectly reasonable just to invite this friend to her evening do and not the whole wedding. This friend has made it clear that this group of long-standing close friends aren't close enough or sufficiently important to her to invite them to her wedding.

Some people are saying that OP would be horrible to do this as it would be tit for tat and unfair. Other people may think that this is just the consequence of OP's friend's own actions. She sounds quite thick-skinned and unembarrassed about expecting an invitation to OP's full wedding when she hasn't invited OP to hers.

I’s be delighted to escape a hen do!!

wtf? Why didn’t you even get a hen do invite? That’s just mean. Even people who can’t make it to wedding/aren’t invited to full day still come to the hen. She’s not a friend imo.

Why would you invite her? She clearly doesn’t see you as a close friend or you’d be going to the full celebrations at her wedding.
It’s a wake-up call.

Let her assume whatever she likes. You don’t need to be a doormat in this situation.

YANBU to limit her invitation to evening only.

Because you're making it all sound so transactional. "SHE didn't give ME 100% so how can SHE expect 100% from ME?!" It's reductive - you're seeing the whole situation in terms of benefits gained and lost, status and rank (am I not an important enough friend?), entitlement.

Weddings are often an emotional flashpoint, so it's understandable to get caught up in this mindset. But it would help you to take a step back and focus on the affection you feel for your friend. Celebrate her marriage and let her celebrate yours.

Maybe she just assumes shes going to the evening like you are to hers?

What on earth? Only one friend from the group is going to the hen do.

Do not do this unless you want to look like a crazy person.

She’s treating the whole group (except one person) the same. I understand your disappointment but you’re not being singled out or treated unfairly compared to the others.

In your place I’d do the same. Either invite all or none (or invite one or two people you are closest to). But leaving only her out would be extremely petty and could ruin your relationship with the whole group.

That’s the point, OP is not being invited to celebrate their actual marriage, but is expected to invite her friend to the main celebration for OP’s.

The only people who do this are those who think that they are superior so social etiquette doesn’t apply to them for those they deem inferior.

These are the type of people who are going on about a hen do and wedding OP is not invited to.

Why do they deserve more care consideration than they are willing to give?

Do you like this woman?

Do you want her at your wedding?

It the answer to both of these is yes, invite her. If the answer to either is no, don’t invite her.

Do this.

She has communiated how close she regards you. Reasonable for you to reevaluate how close you regard the relationship and match the evening only invite.

She has identified she is closer to one member of the group over others. You are free to do the same: you now feel closer to others than her.

It will be interesting how the others fewl when they are aware they are not invited to the hen do or the day.

I definitely wouldn’t invite her.

I don’t think it’s wrong to ask someone expecting to be invited to your wedding as to why you aren’t invited to theirs.

My suggestion upthread was to say ‘I thought we aren’t inviting each other to our weddings because I haven’t been invited to yours,’

Sounds absurd. Everyone should decide their own wedding as they wish.

Over the years we went for a few wider family or friends wedding. Some were nice, some felt we were there just to have all family members in the same relationship there, without being that close.

Now we are getting married - short registry office with our parents only.
I hope no-one will take it personally when they hear about it. At the same time, if they do, their choice.

To be fair, you see it here all the time that people are invited to the pricey hen-do and expected to fork out for it and then "only" invited to the evening... She's only inviting one of your group to the hen & the whole day so I don't think she's being underhanded and maybe she's assumed that she might be evening-only at your wedding but is still excited.

I think you're maybe blowing this up just a little bit OP, and I say that kindly. If it was just you excluded that would be different.

That's a cynical and mean-spirited assumption. The friend could have arranged her wedding that way for any number of reasons.

Your attitude to the friend is basically, "Oh, so you think you're better than me?" Which really is, in the words of previous posters, petty and childish.

Do not understand your friend's thinking at all. A close group of 6 friends of over 20 years and one of them is not invited? Other than immediate family, who could possibly be on the guest list above a close friend of more than 20 years? How many close very longstanding friends has she got?? Then to expect to be invited to your wedding? Really weird, does she have form for this kind of thing?