Weddingbee boards

Okay, I know I will probably get jumped on for this post since I know that people have strong feeling about the "ceremony-invite only" thing, but in reading another thread, I was kind of bothered by what felt like an inconsistency in people's arguments about why it's so wrong.

When someone posts about wanting to invite a group of people to a ceremony only and not the reception, a lot of responses are along the lines of risking offending the ceremony-only people, and causing friendship rifts, etc.  Basically saying you will horribly offend people by inviting them to ceremony only, and if you can't afford/fit them in the reception also, don't invite them at all.  BUT, when people talk about having a small wedding, no one says "you MUST invite all the people that you know & especially those people who ask about being invited or assume they are invited b/c they will be horribly hurt and offended if you don't invite them and you will cause friendship rifts."  Rather, if anything, people say if X friend can't understand you not being able to invite everyone you would like to the wedding, then X isn't your friend at all! It's not a day for them, its a day for you and your FI."

Yes, there are a lot of people who may not care too much about your day, and just want an invite for free food & booze & hanging out, but I'm sure we all have family or friends or associates (especially those that feel closer to us than we are to them) who will be legitimately hurt if we don't invite them (and then others who will feel hurt if we invite those people, and not them...and the spiral goes on and on!).  

So why is okay to hurt people by not inviting them at all, but NOT okay to hurt people by inviting them to one part of the celebration and not the other?  In any event, they would have the option to decline and not waste their time if they don't feel like half a celebration is worth it.

Now, I am NOT saying that you SHOULD invite people to ceremony only.  I am one of the people who would probably be offended if that happened to me.  However, I would also be hurt if someone I cared for didn't invite me at all.  I am just raising this issue b/c it seems inconsistent that we shouldn't care about hurt feelings when excluding people entirely, but should when we trying to include people out of a genuine desire to include them with a limited budget.   

Also, as far as being gift grabby, a ceremony-only invite would seem to me as much like a gift solicitation as a full invite from someone who I didn't consider a close friend, or someone who I suspected had me on their B-list ...even if from the perspective of those people was that they just wanted to include me in their special day.  

It's not always like this but I think people more often associate not being invited at all with it being a smaller family only wedding and being invited to the ceremony only being a money saving thing. I'd rather not be invited because I'm not family than be invited to a ceremony only because they don't have enough money to feed everyone.

@oracle - I totally agree! I would be hurt & offended (and definitely 2nd class!) to have a ceremony-only invite (although in some certain circumstances, I may not be...like especially an informal invite or something through the church, like others have mentioned in other posts).  I just don't know that I would be less hurt & offended to be excluded totally if the wedding wasn't super small and I felt close to the bride and/or groom.  

I guess I don't understand the thinking behind guests being justifiably upset that you tried to include them to the extent that you could but unjustifiably upset that you totally excluded them (for whatever reason).  

If you have to explain why you didn't invite them at all for them to be able to "understand" and not get mad (e.g. "I am having a super-small wedding, so its really only family and a few of our closest friends.") I guess I don't know why explaining the ceremony-only situation is any worse (e.g. "We would love to have everyone there with us, but our budget/reception venue will only allow 75 people, but we wanted to extend the invite for all of the people who have supported us through our relationship to be able to share our exchanging of vows with us.).

@eloping - For most of the people whose weddings I attended, BOTH people went to college with me so it was like a mini-reunion & super fun. However, if it wasn't for that, I would much prefer the ceremony to the reception too.  The ceremony is the part that we are actually there to celebrate...the "party" is just a plus, and if it's full of family and people who I don't know, it's just not fun for me....if it wasn't someone's wedding, that is not a party I would attend. I would just stay to support the couple, not b/c I wanted to.

I just feel like the reasons that people give for the ceremony-only thing being wrong apply in other situations as well that people don't think are wrong. For instance, some of the reasons mentioned in other threads:

*"Ceremony-only guests miss out on the "fun part" of the wedding." - If that's the case, then people who have ONLY ceremonies, and no reception are RUDE.  And possibly also people who don't have dancing, dinner, drinks (i.e. what has become the standard reception fun-fare) are rude too!

*"No one wants to go to ceremony only--it's only 20 minutes!" - Again, ceremony-only couples are SOL, if you don't have a reception you don't deserve to have a wedding. Personally, I know lots of people who wouldn't want to travel cross country for cake and punch either, but as long as they know what to expect, it's up to them to decide if they want to be a part of it. Generally no one says its wrong to just have an hour-long mix & mingle after the ceremony if that's all there is.   

*"Seem gift-grabby" - Potentially so does putting registry info on invites or websites, but that is done all the time.  Also, so could receiving an invite from someone you didn't expect an invite from, even if it is an invite to the whole shebang.  

*"You don't get to spend time with all your guests in such a short period" - People have 300+ guest weddings all the time.  You can't possibly have time for much more than "Thank you for coming, so glad you came!" with that many people, but that is not generally seen as a problem.

Again, all of this is not to say that people SHOULD do it, just saying I don't really understand what makes THIS type of exclusion so much worse than excluding people in other ways when there is potential for hurt feelings no matter what.  I think we just say they SHOULDN'T have their feelings hurt in one situation and they legitimately have their feelings hurt in another.   

@moneypenny02:

"Ceremony-only guests miss out on the "fun part" of the wedding." - If that's the case, then people who have ONLY ceremonies, and no reception are RUDE.  Couples who don't have a reception ARE rude.  But guess what, cake and punch counts as a reception.  All a reception is, is the part of the day when the couple receives their guests.

"Seem gift-grabby" - Potentially so does putting registry info on invites or websites, but that is done all the time.  Putting registry info on invites also seems gift grabby and is an etiquette no-no, despite being done all the time.

"You don't get to spend time with all your guests in such a short period"  I don't think 300+ weddings are great either, but at least you get the opportunity to thank them, even if it's only one sentence, plus you're thanking them for coming by having them at the reception in the first place.

The whole point of the reception is to receive your guests and thank them for coming to the ceremony.  Inviting your guests to the ceremony isn't a privelege bestowed upon them, they are coming to show their love and support for you and should be thanked for that support accordingly.

@moderndaisy- I totally agree.

To the OP: I'm learning that the ceremony-only invite seems to be an issue that some brides struggle with, but IMHO, I think it's poor etiquette no matter how you look at it. I would rather not be invited to someone's wedding at all, than to be told that I was permitted to come to the ceremony only. Doing the ceremony-only invite will then have guests wondering "well why is so-and-so invited to the ceremony and reception but I'm not?" To answer your question, people may feel it's rude because it automatically gives the appearance that some of your guests are more important to you or 'worthy,' of your reception, even if that's not your intent (which I'm sure it isn't).

If I were invited to a ceremony only, I would be offended and I would not go. I feel the same way about "B lists," too. Again, I understand why some people feel they must do it, but I still feel it's rude. Speaking from personal experience, I was "B listed" when I shared an apartment with my sister who was on the "A list!" So obviously I was hurt and offended. I didn't attend that wedding. Neither did my sister. We both thought it was really rude and tacky that someone would do that.

For the aforementioned reasons, we didn't have an A list/B list or ceremony-only invite for our wedding- we simply scaled back our guest list. We had a budget that only allowed us to have x amount of people, and that was that. DH and I sat down and made ONE list of family and close friends who MUST be there. If you didn't make the list, you didn't make the list. With the exorbitant cost of weddings nowadays, most reasonable people will understand not being invited to a small wedding of family and close friends, but I think it's a really hard sell to get people to understand why one person is invited to both the ceremony and reception while another person is not.

Wedding planning is an exciting new experience for brides, and for most of them "wedding etiquette" is one of the new things. They research and find the basic rules of formal etiquette -- but there's where the mistakes begin to arise. Because etiquette is actually subtle and complex, and knowing the "rules" is like "knowing" that E=mC^2 and thinking that means you understand general relativity.

It is absolutely true that you should not flaunt in front of people that they are not invited to something. You don't hand out birthday parties in your grade one class unless you are inviting everybody. You don't invite people to the "dinner" portion of a dinner-dance unless all the people you invite get dinner. You don't invite people to a wedding-and-reception and then tell some of them to leave so that the rest of you can start partying. BUT you need to use some well-informed judgement about the boundaries between public and private events, and what constitutes a single event versus separate events, and what consequences you are likely to incur and are willing to live with regardless of other people's sense of entitlement.

In most jurisdictions, members of your community actually are *entitled* -- either by law, or by the practice of the church -- to be present to witness the legal portion of a wedding. If they want to attend, that's up to them, and if they are politely asking for the logistical details of time and place and you refuse to disclose, overtly telling them that you don't want them there -- then yes, they are likely to have hurt feelings and you are at fault. The vast majority of former school-teachers and grandmothers' card-partners fall into this category: they really just want to be a part of the life of the community and you snubbed them. Etiquette does NOT tell you to do this.

If you *do* have a situation where people who really care about the ceremony are likely to be present, then you need to make a separation between the "wedding" and your "wedding dinner-dance" (or whatever) that you hold at a separate time and place. After all, it was perfectly correct to invite people to your grade-one birthday party whom you didn't invite to your grade-two birthday party -- let alone to your wedding. Etiquette allows you to hold separate events over your life with different guest lists. But you must be scrupulous in keeping the events separate, and must be a gracious hostess at BOTH events.