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Hard and fast rule-
Couples who are married, engaged, or living together are considered a social unit and cannot be broken. This applies regardless of who they will know at the wedding.
You could search the topic on here too, there are alot of different feelings about this. I would think that if you haven't met the B/f prior to the wedding, why would your wedding be a good place to meet? there are some crazy stories here about people writing in the plus one's on response cards, and even just showing up with their plus one. People are nuts.
You must include +1 if the couple is engaged or married. Other than that... it's really up to you how strict you are. But I do suggest you pick a clear line and stick to it. Don't just pick and choose because there will be hurt feelings. For us, other than people who are engaged or married we only allowed +1's for our wedding party. (We did invite some non engaged couples if it was a situation where we were good friends with both halves of the couple)
I'm using the married, engaged, or living together rule.
I will also relax the rules for the wedding party and offer them a plus one if they want it.
Also, one of my BMs is in a very serious relationship and I know her bf well. They are not living together, but she would be getting a plus one whether or not she was a BM.
There are also some older family friends who have lost their spouses. I will let my parents tell me if they should get a plus 1 or not.
belle has the hard and fast rule!
i'm adding +1s for a few people who are traveling and don't know many people at the wedding, but that's not a requirement so if your budget can't allow it don't worry. the only people who require a +1 are the ones in belle's list.
for our wedding, we ONLY allowed +1s for engaged, married, living together. we paid for the whole thing ourselves and no acceptions were made. however, we had no shows and crashers... so plan as you might, some things will just be beyond your control the day of. make the invites +RSVP cards very clear, call people that you are worried may show up with their new BF of 2 weeks, and hope for the best
I'm using this rule: If neither FI nor I knows the +1, and the +1 is not married or engaged to an invited guest, then they aren't coming. Sorry, we want everyone at our wedding to be people we know, because it will be pretty intimate (mostly family guests). You really have to be pretty ruthless about this issue, and explain that you just can't afford to invite +1's you've never met before. To avoid people writing in +1's on the RSVP cards, you could do what I'm doing and have people RSVP through your wedding website, where there is no possible way to write in extra names.
By the way, the problem that I see with the "married, engaged, and living together only" rule is that FI and I have a lot of friends who are couples that do not fit into any of the above categories. So we are going to have a lot of non-married/engaged/living together couples there, because they are our friends. That's why I added the "if I don't know you, you're not coming" addendum, to explain the exceptions to the traditional rule :)
We used the married, engaged or living together rule and bridal party. However only one person in our bridal party (my brother) brought a date who wouldnt have been invited anyways. We also allowed +1s to a few people who were traveling from across the country and we thought it would be nice if they were able to travel with someone. The one person brought her boyfriend of over a year who I had met before and the other person brought a mutual friend from college so it worked out really well.
I gave the option for a plus 1 for all my guest & I had a strict number we couldn't go over.
Due to this number and inviting plus ones, I was more picky about who I invited initally.
There is a thread I read a few days ago about this. The original thread is: http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/guests-calling-and-asking-to-bring-dates-am-i-overreacting/page/2
Here is a snippet of what I wrote:
On our invites, if their was no date, we of course addressed to: Mr. Friend Friend. On the RSVP we put a line that said "We have reserved ______ seats in your name" and put a 1 in the blank for those guests.
We got 27 back (of the 30 that weren't supposed to have dates) that had either had been filled out with 2 (or more!) names on the m___________ line, or that had a note with the RSVP saying, "I hope you don't mind but I invited "girl" from work/school/church/a random bar as my date. Don't worry about counting her, though! She won't eat a thing!" And for all of these people, FI and I had never heard of, much less met, the supposed date.
Arghh!!!!! The reason we needed a guest count was not because of the food (although at $100, 27 extra people is RIDICULOUS) The biggest reason is because our ceremony location only fit a certain number of people, and I knew about 95% of our families would reply with a yes. Had I wanted them to all bring dates, I would have either chosen a different venue or narrowed down my friend list.
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Point is, no matter what steps you take, you will still have rude / oblivious people who don't get that they can't bring a date. Stay firm til the very end about the policy and don't budge. If they just show up anyway, breathe and try not to let it bother you. Then, if they have a problem getting a seat, getting food etc, kindly remind them this is why you set a date policy in the first place!
I agree with the married/engaged/living together rule. I will likely also include plus ones for people who are in longterm, serious, committed relationships.
I think it's a very nice thing to also include plus ones for people who otherwise won't know many people (or anyone!) at the wedding. Although it's your day, it's also time that your guests are devoting to you, and it will be MUCH more enjoyable for people if they know at least one other person there. Nobody likes being at a party alone. I think it's just common courtesy to allow them to bring a friend/date.
However, my single friends/family who will know other people (i.e. they're part of a group of friends of which everyone will be there) will have to deal with being single. They won't be alone, and I'm not going to pay for someone random who will bring no more benefit for the invited guest than he/she would have otherwise.
We allowed everyone over the age of 18 a +1. We had a small venue and it was a stretch, but DH and I dated for 7 years and never lived together, and I knew I would have been upset if he were invited to a wedding without me during that time. We didn't want to upset any of our guests in that way.
However, we did talk to our friends and family who were not in serious relationships and reiterated the fact that we had a very small venue, and we hoped they wouldn't bring a random date just to "fill a seat". We didn't have any dancing, and they were with all of our other friends, so it wasn't so uncomfortable to be there alone.
We ended up only having 1 friend who wasn't in a serious relationship bring a date.
I'm creating my own rules for this one because I have friends that are married or engaged (whom sig others will definitely be invited) and others that are VERY single. Having been in that "very single" position before and not being invited +1 to weddings, I know that sinking, lonely, I'm going to have to dance with myself feeling. However, now being on the wedding planning end, with a tight budget, I'm stuck in the middle. I will be slipping a matching note in with the invitations to those single individuals with a message like "If there is a special someone that you'd like to bring to our wedding, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate." We will then monitor our numbers and figure out if we can afford to allow new boyfriends/random dates/etc. If we can't, then I want my friends to know that the thought was there and it's purely a money thing.
I come from a strict religious background, and though I am not so uptight about things like that, a lot of the people I know are. Which means most of the serious couples who aren't yet engaged (but likely will be soon) DON'T live together. So married/engaged/living together is not a good rule for me. Fortunately, I am avoiding that issue by giving everyone a plus one, but I can imagine what a pain it would be to have to make those kinds of distinctions if I wasn't. My guest list is enough of a nightmare, thanks.
married/engaged/living together/serious relationship, as in, they've been together for 1 year or more (or 6 months or any amount you want...it's arbitrary but so is any line you're drawing). this gets the folks who don't live together but are in serious relationships. we had a bunch of these people, for religious/conservative families/stuck in long leases reasons.
we only had an issue with 2 people--an out of town bridesmaid who i let bring a friend of ours as her "date--" i've known the guy since i was in preschool so he wasn't random/i could have feasibly invited him anyway if anyone questioned the rule! and my sil wanted to bring a date, but we were able to shut that down since she wasn't dating anyone and it would have been someone totally random...
It is such a hard issue, but I agree with setting some sort of rules and sticking with them. We included plus ones for all guests, regardless of relationship status, and worried that our numbers would be higher than we wanted. We invited 150 guests including the plus ones, and ended up with 110 as many of these people did not bring dates. One of our ushers phoned like a month before the wedding asking if he could bring this girl as a date that was friends with two of our wedding guests, but not friends of ours. It was obvious that this girl was just trying to get an invite to the party and we explained that we didn't invite her and therefore did not really want her at the wedding. The usher who asked was not dating her in any way shape or form and was simply asking on behalf of the girl who wanted the invite. He wasn't upset by this, although I kinda felt bad putting my foot down, but I did not really like this girl and she is a known wedding crasher!
I would account for plus ones regardless of marital status/dating status, if guests are coming from out of town as it is always nice to have a travel buddy!
For guests in a serious relationship, we are including the name of the SO on the invitation. No haphazard dates just for the wedding. As of now, this included merely three of of our guests.
I have been livid about this issue all week!!! my rule is as long you consider your date a bf/gf then they can come (no randoms, or someone you ate just casually seeing). The only exception is if they dont know anyone, then they can bring any date regardless of relationship status. i thought i was being lenient. a lot of fiances friends are single. One is giving us such a hard time saying the no date rule is rediculous.. and ALL WEDDINGS you should be invited with a date blah blah... ughhhhh
I think Belle (and other posters) got it right with the engaged, married, or living together. Yeah, a wedding is not the time to introduce boyfriends :\
I agree with the above posts generally about the marriage/engaged couple invite.
It's also fine to add a + 1 if you know the person's partner and would like them there. Otherwise, simply no.
i think everyone deserved a +1. who likes going to a wedding along? no one. everyone deserved to have a good time, not just the people who have managed to date someone for any signigicant amount of time.
when we were making our guest list, we added a plus one for all our friends. if we couldnt accomodate all the friends and their guests, we cut the guest list.
personally, if i were invited to a wedding without a date, and wasnt allowed to bring someone just because i wasnt married, there is a good chance i wouldnt attend. i dont want to sit at a table alone.
i agree that meeting a boyfriend for the first time isnt really wedding appropriate, but who really cares? you're friend is there being happy for you, you cant manage to be happy for them in their new relationship at the same time?
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Wanted to get everyone's opinion on the whole Plus 1 thing. We are getting married at a hotel in NH that is pretty fancy...and I am so grateful to my wonderful parents who are paying for a good part of this wedding. However I don't know what to do about plus 1's. I know they say it's just one person but at $100 per plate and open bar the whole time it is alot of $$ in my opinion. I have people saying things like "I am so excited to come, I can't wait for you to meet my boyfriend!" And a good part of me is thinking, if I haven't met him before and don't know him he isn't coming to the wedding.
Is there a hard and fast rule to go by? Thanks!