Is this reasonable

[lorribell]

Planning small wedding (20 guests), therefore venues will only cater for this on a weekday.

Is it reasonable to expect guests to book 2 days off work to attend the wedding, driving two hours to get there.

1. We will pay for there 5 star accommodation for the night plus breakfast.
2. Dinner and free bar until 10pm.
3. 1 years notice for this also

Nothing wrong with asking. It’s likely if they have children they might have the time off anyway? Plus it’s a years notice so enough time to plan.

Whether I’d go or not depends on how much I liked the person tbh

I did exactly this, nobody minded (or if they did, they were polite enough not to say so!). To be fair, due to retirement, part time working etc I think only 7 of our guests actually had to take annual leave. They were all very close family, we wouldn't have considered it for a larger wedding.

Sounds great. Hope I'm one of your 20 guests 😆😆😆😆😆

If it's in school holidays, no problem for me at all. If it was term time, it would be a sad decline from me unless you were my child or my sibling. I work in a school and therefore my leave IS the school holidays. Days off during term time have to be taken as unpaid leave and whilst my HT would try to accommodate it, I could not afford two days unpaid. I had to take one day unpaid earlier this year, for a general, And it made a huge difference to my salary for that month.

We did a weeknight wedding. A Monday. In our original plan, only one set of guests would need to travel and they were retired and would have had to travel regardless. Everyone with a job had the option of just coming after work and we wrapped things up early enough they could work the next day. Our original guest list was parents, grandparents, siblings, and a few very close friends.

In the end, many family members balked at not being invited so we extended the guest list to aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom had to take off work and travel. We were surprised at how many came. It was still a small wedding, but not quite as small as originally planned.

You know who you are inviting so whether it’s reasonable or not depends on their demographic.

Mine could be seen as unreasonable in lots of ways but we were inviting a fairly well off group of freelancers, teachers and retired friends. If we had been in our 20’s, I’m betting the young families/ first house/ careers may have made a massive difference to the perception of reasonable.

I would say yours sounds fine but with only 20 guests I’d just ask informally first.

Sounds lovely OP. Obviously some may have trouble getting kids out of school, but otherwise I think it sounds really nice.

Sounds lovely to me OP. Especially as it's August and kids are allowed. Enjoy!