to think the bride and her family were rather rude?

[dejavuaswell]

We have just returned from my nephew's wedding. This was first wedding at which neither the bride nor her parents spoke to the bridegroom's aunts, uncles or cousins at any point from our arrival at 11:45 to our departure at 22:00. They never even came near us so we couldn't take the initiative and grab them!

Add on the fact that the sit-down meal was held in a room where we could not even see the top table and you can see why my younger sister (the Bridegroom's Mother) is so upset.

Whoa, Tidybush, what rude people! MIL is a God-snob but even she wouldn't do that!

Wedding seating is a pain. I thought you had to tell everyone where to sit and Mum, MIL and I had an awful time trying to figure out where to put everyone. For someone who wasn't paying, MIL was very bolshy and with hindsight, I wish Mum and I had put our foot down a bit more as I think some of my aunts and uncles would have been happier seated with people they knew.

When my friend got married, she told everyone to sit where they liked and tbh I thought it was much better.

Thank you KurriKurri. I was starting to feel I was the only one thinking this way. 12 of us travelled a minimum of 120 miles to be there and I think some acknowledgement of our existance by the bride and/or brides parents would have been nice.

Of course it wasn't done on purpose.

The q isn't so much 'AIBU' as what should you do about it. You have 2 choices. 1) Resent the bride and her family for ever more and refuse to speak to them again (my grandma's preferred option) or 2) say 'it wasn't ideal, I think it was a bit rude but was probably thoughtless or disorganisation, lets suck it up and carry on as normal.

If you don't go for option 2 (IMVHO of course) you are being wholly unreasonable and don't deserve to have been invited at all.

really she should have a word with her son. He should have seen there was an issue with seating for the family.

How close is he to the aunts, uncles and cousins though?

The groom was just a helpless idiot in the clutches of some evil woman then? Not a grown adult who could have made the effort himself to make sure the seating plan was appropriate and that they got around to everyone?

YABU, get over it. Weddings are busy.

I agree with Morloth where was the bridegroom in all of this - could he not have stood up for his family if he thought they were being sidelined in some way? Or at least intoduced his relations to his inlaws.

I always feel a bit annoyed that the women always get blamed in these matters and the men get away scot free like they're immune from the social niceties - though this might not be the case here.

YANBU -If people have come all the way for a wedding it is only polite to talk to them - in a line up or separately. If you're too busy having your photo taken or whatever to not even greet people then you've got your priorities wrong IMO.

YABU, I tried really hard to get round everyone at my wedding, and it wasn't a huge one, but it was really difficult to manage. I kept being grabbed by people, it was hard to extract myself from conversations etc etc. I was also very conscious that whilst some guests had come in large groups (e.g. family), others had come singly or in couples and didn't know anyone else there, so I was conscious of making the effort to make these people feel at ease and introduce them to other people. I also had relatives who had travelled thousands of miles to be there and who I probably wouldn't see again for a couple of years. I think I did manage to talk to everyone but didn't spend a lot of time with DH's relatives as we tend to see them a couple of times a year, I could see DH talking to them all, and they were in a group enjoying each others company. YABU to blame the bride when her husband presumably knows you better and is more at ease with you and should have taken responsibility, and YABU if you didn't go and make an effort to speak to them yourselves. I really do think you need to let this go. As a guest at a wedding, particularly if I am in a large group of family or friends who I am pleased to spend time with anyway, I have always understood how hard it might be for the bride and groom to get round everybody.

YANBU

I would expect the bride and groom and 'do the rounds' and thank people for coming. Tis tedious, but I think if people have travelled to your wedding/bought you a present, the least you can do is drop in on each table.

I can understand how it might happen that a few guests get overlooked. But when the bride and her parents do not make the effort to speak to any of the Bridgegroom's family then I think it should be regarded as a missed opportunity to build bridges between the two families.

Meeting and greeting as guests arrive at the reception is an excellent way of handling this issue but if you choose not to do it then you need to put alernatives in place.

Surely the bridegrooms mother should have been on teh top table ?

I'm sorry, but you seem to have a hopelessly outdated idea of weddings!

Most couples pay for and organise their own weddings. They aren't often hosted by the bride's family and you aren't there are their guests. You have as much right (and responsibility) to go and say hello to them, and they are equally in their rights to think you are being rude by not bothering to make the effort to say hello them.

Build bridges between the two families? Let's be honest, unless they have a big christening which are increasingly less popular, it is the one and only time you are going to meet most of them. This isn't some antiquated Victorian courtship ritual where you have to wait for them to make the first introduction before forming some lifelong bond. If it meant that much to you, you should have made the effort.
You coudln't be bothered, therefore you only have yourself(ves) to blame for the bridge not being built.

From my own experience, I was far more interested in my parents meeting my friends than I was DHs long-lost cousins and aunts. I often talk about my friends to my parents, so they wanted to put faces to names.

As it was the Brides Parents names on the invitation then as far as I am aware they count as the hosts.

Meeting and greeting guests, some of whom have had long journeys to be there, is surely not too much to expect?

My DH and I paid for and organised our wedding but still put my parents' names on the invitations - was nice for them.

I've been at a wedding where we were seated in a completely different room too. Didn't bother me, as the most important part for me is the wedding ceremony itself.

If they invited you, you are obviously important to them - however, if you sat there waiting for people to come to you, I think that you were being a little unreasonable as other people said. I think you're just going to have to let it go - you can't go back and change it now and why let it spoil family relationships?

None of what has been said here or to me elesewhere would ever be said to the Bride, Groom or Bride's family. So it will not impact on family relationships.

But I still think that meeting and greeting guests as they arrive at the reception is a good idea.

A recieving line takes ages. Our reception venue specifically advised against having one because it takes up to an hour to get everyone seated for dinner

Rather than wasting an hour doing the meet and greet, we sat everyone down and got on with the meal. This meant we could start the evening bit an hour earlier, which was especially important as we had evening guests coming.

I've been to an average of 5 weddings a year for the last 4 or 5 years and I can only remember 1 of them having a receiving line.

I think you have to accept you have very outdated views on weddings and their ettiquette...

I chose not to have a line-up and I find them so contrived and awful.

Remember that scene from 4 weddings - 'I never know what to say at these things', 'oh, just stick with: you must be so proud' / inane grin.

Awful.

Plus, forcing everyone to queue up like that instead of enjoying their drinks and canapes for a bit longer?? No.

I think many modern brides think like this, and the vast majority of guests thank them for it.

Bloody weddings.

My niece recently got married - she's the first of the next generation on our side (I'm her dad's family) but not on her mother's side.

So when it came to the reception we headed inside & helped ourselves to coffee etc (It had been a 2 hour car journey from the ceremony to the reception venue & we all had young childre, toilet stops etc turned into almost 3 hour journey)

We thought it was odd that none of the mother of the bride's family had arrived yet but as they all have children too we assumed they may have been travelling or checking into hotel etc..

But lo and behold, it emerges after the meal etc that her family had all been told to go to the photo venue for 'family photos' and our hadn't - but apparently, according to the bride's mum, we all should have known that this is what we should have done.

No actually, nobody told us. We haven't been in that situation before and at any of our weddings we just had close family, sisters brothers etc in our album, not a whole host of aunts & uncles.

She still blames us though & says we all (7 of us with families etc and none of us were aware of the photos) ruined her dd's wedding (niece has never mentioned it to me & I talk to her all the time) and that when it comes to our children's wedding's she will never forget it.

Families, don't you just love them.

My Mum forced me to have a line-up, in fact she bullied me about quite a few things regarding the wedding. Out of about 20 weddings it was only ours and one other that had a line up and they're a bit of a ballache imo.

YABU, I'm afraid you sound a bit like my dhs family. they sat, bums glued to seats and barely spoke to anyone. It's v difficult to get round everyone at a wedding.

We had a receiving line because we realised we would never get to greet everyone any other way (big wedding), and some whinging distant relatives we were forced to invite still moaned on about not getting enough attention at the reception. We have never seen them since in almost 5 years of marriage. Bothered me briefly, then I realised they'd have been miffed no matter what we did. I think we could have sat them on top table and they would have complained about not having a central enough position.

I think you are being A bit U to be honest. UNless there was a deliberate snub, then it is just really hard to see everyone, and the day is often a blur. I know ours was. We only had 40 people or so, and I was trying so hard to see everyone, as was DH that we ended up not even having a first dance, or even getting around to cutting the cake. There were just so many demands on us. I also failed to have even a full glass of champagne as every time i stopped moving I was dragged away by someone else. It is a big regret to me that everything was such a blur in the end. You should have gone to them, really. We had an elderly couple who came late... arriving just as we were all sitting down, and who left as soon as the speeches were done, not even waiting for the coffee, and I heard on the grapevine afterwards that they were annoyed because we did not see them. We literaly did not have an opportunity.

They might not have been aware the other table was going to be that far out, or the caterers might have taken it upon themselves to move things around.

At our wedding me and my two bridesmaids spent HOURS the night before the wedding working out and amending a table plan for 120 people. DH and I had decided against a top table, as the family politics were too complicated, so we had our table which my mum and MIL were with us, then the idea was that either side of that table we would have had each Dad (and partner) host a family table of their own. We even considered who was going to be in who's eyeline and drew the whole lot up on a careful plan to give to the caterers. On arrival at dinner we discovered that the caterers had flipped all the tables around so the people at the head of the tables were at the foot of the tables and they'd swapped our table with FIL's so he was several tables away, as they had thought it more important that our table faced a set of double doors(!). They did all this without asking, and by the time we arrived everyone was taking their seats and we didn't think it possible to get everyone to switch around.

So, the table thing may not have been intentional.

As for going to speak to you...why didn't you go and speak to them? Especially to go and congratulate the bride?

I agree, they were rude. This is why we had a line up on the way into the meal.

We also had a "line up" to make sure we & our parents met everyone.

But then after the meal, everyone mingled also-thought this always happened?

We also paid for everything but the invitations were from my parents.

OP, if there were only 5 tables and the bride and groom went to 4 but not yours, as you describe, then YANBU.

But I think tummytime has a good point - how are you going to deal with it? Very good post by TT.