I'm posting this on behalf of a bewildered (and insulted)friend of mine, since I wasn't really sure if this is a cut-and-dry answer.
My friend has been specifically told by the groom that the invitation does NOT include a guest and that she's invited to attend only by herself since the wedding guest list has "been a big problem" and costly to their budget.
Naturally, as a single woman, she was quite insulted and thus decided to to attend at all.
Is this part of the new etiquette? not to include a plus one because of budget costs despite hurting your friends' feelings?
The bride and groom can only afford to invite a certain number of people, so it's not new etiquette, it is just the unfortunate truth.
If the bride invites only 30 people + guests and the groom invites 30 + guests you are already at 120 people, nothing to sneeze at for what would seem to be a small wedding at first.
I am sure it wasn't one to hurt your friend's feelings. The bride and groom would probably invite everyone who wanted to be invited, if they could.
Personally, I've been to weddings where I was not provided a guest and I didn't mind at all. I knew everyone (or most) who would be there, many of my other singles gals were there and a date would have been a hinderance. That particular couple's logic was - why should we pay for a meal for someone we don't know, and most likely will never see again...
That being said. It's now my turn to plan a wedding. We TOO are NOT giving PLUS one's. We will however give them to anybody who we feel may need that to fall back on b/c they may not have a good time without one (not know anybody at wedding or etc), but our logic is this - we don't want anyone to bring a guest for the sake of just trying to bring someone. All of our friends with significant others will be allowed their plus 1. Anybody invited will be allowed to bring someone who is important to them - but if they are capable of having a good time without, and aren't in a serious relationship, they will not get a plus one.
We hope that no one gets offended, but once you get into the budget/planning shoes of a bride/groom - the figures all start to add up and you realize, in order to get the people you want to be there, you have to sacrifice a little "etiquette" (for some who get offended) to do so.
When I was unattached, I never brought a date to weddings. It just didn't feel right to me-- the bride and groom wouldn't have known whoever it was I decided to bring, and the date probably wouldn't have had much fun anyway. Now, if someone in a serious relationship/married was told to come solo, that would be different.
Weddings do cost a lot of $$, and they may not have extra room in the budget for random people-- especially if they've already had to make serious cuts in the guest list.
This is a really hard issue. We are paying for the wedding ourselves and at first we thought that we'd not invite +guests at all due to the budget.
This may seem harsh.. but if your the friend that you're posting for is so insulted that she won't go to the wedding at all, it seems like she's very unsympathetic to the fact that the bride and groom's budget is limited.
I think that weddings cost a lot more than people really think. If you've never planned one or not planned one recently, you just don't know. We are having a medium sized wedding, I have a large family, our wedding is under the national average for cost and it's STILL costing us over $100 per person. We have decided to let people bring guests but I kind of hope that no one brings some friend just because they don't want to go alone or something.
I've had to make some decisions based on budget--I have a B list for example. I feel like my friends will understand that it isn't that I don't want them at the wedding... it's purely financial and I hope that they'll understand. :( The B list is actually letting me get to my goal # of guests.
It's tough but please tell your friend to try be sympathetic. Obviously the bride and groom want her there to be a part of their wedding. It could be a limitation of their budget or venue... :/
Only significant others are allowed at ours, and nobody has voiced any concern or disappointment. Boyfriends & girlfriends are not allowed--needs to be a fiancee or a partner. End of story. We have 3 reasons: 1. we don't want random people at our wedding; 2. budget; 3. we don't want people to be introducing random dates and/or feel obligated to babysit a date.
Most importantly, we want our wedding to be as intimate as a 150+ wedding can be, and to achieve that we imposed a strict rule: every guest has to be personally connected to either the bride or groom.
Allowing guests to bring dates is not necessary in terms of etiquette. The only "dates" that etiquette demands are spouses, and the partners of people who cohabitate. However, it is not polite to specifically point out to people that they are not allowed to bring a date. You are only supposed to put the invited person's name on the invitation and hope they understand they can't invite people on their own.
Whew! Been reading my Emily Post. And no, my single guests will not get to invite dates (people they don't live with and have been dating less than a year). Otherwise we won't be able to invite all those we do know and want to be there to celebrate with us.
Weddings are expensive, and while this may come off as rude, it is in fact totally up to the bride and groom to make the decision. We have several people at our wedding who were not invited with a guest, we felt significant others (seriously dating/engaged even) we're allowed to attened with a guest.
I doubt they don't have faith in her choice of dates, but weddings are costly and while I would have been horribly upset to be on the recieving end of a non-guest invite before planning my wedding - I now totally understand why it happens.
Tell her to not take it personally, and that she should feel great that they want her there as it seems to be a rather intiamte reception and she's obviously special to them.
We're also not allowing +1s unless we personally know them or they've made it known that they're "serious" (we didn't want to get into the business of judging "serious"). That meant that we did invite our friend's gf, but it also meant that we didn't invite our other friend's baby mama. It's nice if you can do +1s, but it's very common now not to, especially if the guest will know a number of people at the wedding.
I'm basically on the same place with everyone who replied. We invite significant others and fiance only. That's hard enough for us. No boyfriend/girlfriend, unless we know them. We put "and guests" for singles whom we thought are more conservative, but probably just a couple of them.
From our point of view, it really is the budget issues. We don't mean to be rude at all, but we really hope that the people that we invite are being understanding enough (which we believe so) that all of this comes from our own pocket and we are certainly not a millionaire at this point. :)
I'm engaged but it's a long distance relationship so I guess I'm used to going to weddings as a solo (even though the invitation comes with "and guest"). It's a bit hard for me at first, but it's not that hard, really! What I usually do is just making sure that I know at least a couple or a few people so I can at least sit with someone I know. Besides, i personally think it's not really as much fun to have to babysit your date in your friend's wedding. Just my opinion.
I'll echo what everyone here has said already. Its hard to imagine, but your friends plus one could cost her friend and his fiance upwards of $200 depending on what kind of wedding they are having. My guess is your friend feels like she is being singled out and being "punished" because she isnt in a relationship. I say that because, before I knew how much weddings cost, I felt the same way once or twice But that isnt the case at all, its really just about the cost and, even more importantly, being surrounded by as many loved ones as possible - even if it means forgoing a few plus ones.
It isn't the "new etiquette" at all. Per Emily Post and Miss manners, only people who are married, or living together/engaged must be allowed to bring dates. Otherwise, if they can swing it they can, and if they can't, they aren't doing anything wrong. Your friend is out of line to be so insulted by this.
Your friend must not be very close with the bride and the groom if she's not going because she can't bring a friend. Like everyone else, we're not inviting an "and guest" unless they're serious because we don't have the space or the money.
I have a friend who dropped out of a wedding party because he wasn't allowed to bring his girlfriend. It's a long story, but basically, the couple planning the wedding told their single (at the time) groomsmen a year before the wedding that they wouldn't be allowed to bring dates. Nine months from the wedding, one groomsman got a girlfriend. Two months before the wedding, he got an invite, sans guest. (The couple had a "only engaged or living together" rule for guests.) He, and his girlfriend, were livid, and he fought with the couple about bringing his girlfriend to the wedding, to the rehearsal dinner, and they finally dropped him from the wedding party.
Many people say that it is rude to not allow your groomsmen to bring a guest, especially not a fairly serious girlfriend. But when I spoke to the couple in question, the bride said, "I had friends of my own I wasn't able to invite because of the money. I wasn't going to sacrifice MY friends so that he could bring his girlfriend."
I have a number of friends getting married next summer, and the ones that are not particularly close to my boyfriend (who I live with and have been with for four years and am basically engaged to) I've already told that they shouldn't feel the need to invite him as well. I know how much dinner will cost them, and I'm going to have just as much fun without him, hanging out with my friends.
I think its fine to invite somebody without a guest as long as they will know at least one other person at a wedding. Otherwise, they should be allowed to bring someone.
OMG do weddings cost a LOT! Agreed with all previous posters...and being a budget bride, we're only allowing our married/engaged/long-term relationship (at least 1 year together & we both must know the boyfriend/girlfriend) friends bring a guest. No strangers at this wedding...why would anyone want to pay for a stranger?
Anyways..if your friend was truly your friend, he/she would go to your wedding no matter what...dateless and all. I went stag to a wedding even though I had been with my guy for 6 years; I understood her situation.
Even before I started planning my wedding, I totally didn't get the random wedding date thing. I mean really, doesn't it raise too many questions? If you've been dating long enough to wonder where your relationship is going, it's a lot of pressure. If you're the date who doesn't know anyone, how much fun are you going to have watching these people you don't even know exchange vows, and meeting all their elderly aunts and uncles?
That said, have both venue size and budget limitations - for a total capacity of about 150. Since I have a pretty large family, and we have a lot of married friends, we had to exercise some judgement with the single folks. We called each of them to ask if there was someone special whose name we should include on the invitation (our nice way of saying if you automatically know who you would bring, they are invited - if not, you are invited alone). Three of them had answers right away, and so we did include their SOs (none of whom we have met, but all of whom we had heard about previously, so we knew they were dating).
One other single guy asked if he could bring his daughter, whom we also know fairly well, so we said yes. Two additional single people RSVP'd with dates that we don't know - however, since they are travelling from St. Croix and South Carolina (to our wedding in Washington State) we're going to give them the plus-ones - after all, lots of people don't like to travel alone. Three local singles (actually friends of FI's daughter, not our friends per se) asked to bring dates, and were told that we couldn't accomodate that. As far as I can tell, they have no problem going as a group of girls to dinner or the movies, so I can't see how they can't have fun as a group of girls at our wedding. And we do have a number of single guys their age invited, so there shouldn't be any shortage of people to hang out or dance with.
I feel like we have been really reasonable - but first of all, we really don't want people we don't even know at our wedding. Secondly, at about $70 per guest, we don't feel bad about not wanting to feed and entertain people who don't even know us. And at the end of the day, anyone who decides they would rather stay home, or maybe catch dinner and a movie with their SO at their own expense, didn't really want share the day with us all that badly - so it's no great loss. We did try to be very polite to everybody, regardless of the answer we gave them.
I should also say, since we are keeping things pretty small in the first place, there is actually nobody invited who won't know at least a dozen people there - so the argument that somebody who comes without a date will feel lonely and out of place really doesn't wash with us.
sadly, this happens. We allowed boyfriends/girlfriends, but only if it had been a while, no one could bring someone they had gone on a few dates with. But if she is single, I don't get what the big deal is. You really aren't supposed to bring a random person with you to someone's wedding. I definitely don't think the "only if you're living together" thing is fair. some people are long distance, but can be in a relationship for years, some could want to wait until marriage, etc...I also don't like when I was dating my husband and some family had met him, but he wasn't invited. Just because we weren't engaged yet doesn't mean we weren't going to be someday, you know? I understand budget issues. I do however think each case is different and should be considered before saying absolutely yes or no to dates.
After reading all these posts, I'm glad I wasn't complete alone AND realize i can actually be a little more stringent too. I love the "no ring no bring" and am thinking Maybe we should implement the "no ring, no bring" or the "one house or (future) spouse" rule to include co -habitants - for the plus one rule...
I'm posting this on behalf of a bewildered (and insulted)friend of mine, since I wasn't really sure if this is a cut-and-dry answer.
My friend has been specifically told by the groom that the invitation does NOT include a guest and that she's invited to attend only by herself since the wedding guest list has "been a big problem" and costly to their budget.
Naturally, as a single woman, she was quite insulted and thus decided to to attend at all.
Is this part of the new etiquette? not to include a plus one because of budget costs despite hurting your friends' feelings?
Thanks everyone!
posted by mrsallgood 50 posts 5 months agoThe bride and groom can only afford to invite a certain number of people, so it's not new etiquette, it is just the unfortunate truth.
If the bride invites only 30 people + guests and the groom invites 30 + guests you are already at 120 people, nothing to sneeze at for what would seem to be a small wedding at first.
I am sure it wasn't one to hurt your friend's feelings. The bride and groom would probably invite everyone who wanted to be invited, if they could.
posted by pineapple 61 posts 5 months agoPersonally, I've been to weddings where I was not provided a guest and I didn't mind at all. I knew everyone (or most) who would be there, many of my other singles gals were there and a date would have been a hinderance. That particular couple's logic was - why should we pay for a meal for someone we don't know, and most likely will never see again...
That being said. It's now my turn to plan a wedding. We TOO are NOT giving PLUS one's. We will however give them to anybody who we feel may need that to fall back on b/c they may not have a good time without one (not know anybody at wedding or etc), but our logic is this - we don't want anyone to bring a guest for the sake of just trying to bring someone. All of our friends with significant others will be allowed their plus 1. Anybody invited will be allowed to bring someone who is important to them - but if they are capable of having a good time without, and aren't in a serious relationship, they will not get a plus one.
We hope that no one gets offended, but once you get into the budget/planning shoes of a bride/groom - the figures all start to add up and you realize, in order to get the people you want to be there, you have to sacrifice a little "etiquette" (for some who get offended) to do so.
posted by amy77jc 24 posts 5 months agoWhen I was unattached, I never brought a date to weddings. It just didn't feel right to me-- the bride and groom wouldn't have known whoever it was I decided to bring, and the date probably wouldn't have had much fun anyway. Now, if someone in a serious relationship/married was told to come solo, that would be different.
Weddings do cost a lot of $$, and they may not have extra room in the budget for random people-- especially if they've already had to make serious cuts in the guest list.
posted by lulubelle 67 posts 5 months agoThis is a really hard issue. We are paying for the wedding ourselves and at first we thought that we'd not invite +guests at all due to the budget.
This may seem harsh.. but if your the friend that you're posting for is so insulted that she won't go to the wedding at all, it seems like she's very unsympathetic to the fact that the bride and groom's budget is limited.
I think that weddings cost a lot more than people really think. If you've never planned one or not planned one recently, you just don't know. We are having a medium sized wedding, I have a large family, our wedding is under the national average for cost and it's STILL costing us over $100 per person. We have decided to let people bring guests but I kind of hope that no one brings some friend just because they don't want to go alone or something.
I've had to make some decisions based on budget--I have a B list for example. I feel like my friends will understand that it isn't that I don't want them at the wedding... it's purely financial and I hope that they'll understand. :( The B list is actually letting me get to my goal # of guests.
It's tough but please tell your friend to try be sympathetic. Obviously the bride and groom want her there to be a part of their wedding. It could be a limitation of their budget or venue... :/
posted by yiska 123 posts 5 months agoOnly significant others are allowed at ours, and nobody has voiced any concern or disappointment. Boyfriends & girlfriends are not allowed--needs to be a fiancee or a partner. End of story. We have 3 reasons: 1. we don't want random people at our wedding; 2. budget; 3. we don't want people to be introducing random dates and/or feel obligated to babysit a date.
Most importantly, we want our wedding to be as intimate as a 150+ wedding can be, and to achieve that we imposed a strict rule: every guest has to be personally connected to either the bride or groom.
posted by misschickie 58 posts 5 months agoAllowing guests to bring dates is not necessary in terms of etiquette. The only "dates" that etiquette demands are spouses, and the partners of people who cohabitate. However, it is not polite to specifically point out to people that they are not allowed to bring a date. You are only supposed to put the invited person's name on the invitation and hope they understand they can't invite people on their own.
Whew! Been reading my Emily Post. And no, my single guests will not get to invite dates (people they don't live with and have been dating less than a year). Otherwise we won't be able to invite all those we do know and want to be there to celebrate with us.
posted by bluegreenjean 118 posts 5 months agoWeddings are expensive, and while this may come off as rude, it is in fact totally up to the bride and groom to make the decision. We have several people at our wedding who were not invited with a guest, we felt significant others (seriously dating/engaged even) we're allowed to attened with a guest.
I doubt they don't have faith in her choice of dates, but weddings are costly and while I would have been horribly upset to be on the recieving end of a non-guest invite before planning my wedding - I now totally understand why it happens.
Tell her to not take it personally, and that she should feel great that they want her there as it seems to be a rather intiamte reception and she's obviously special to them.
posted by Sweeney2Be 1,488 posts 5 months agoWe're also not allowing +1s unless we personally know them or they've made it known that they're "serious" (we didn't want to get into the business of judging "serious"). That meant that we did invite our friend's gf, but it also meant that we didn't invite our other friend's baby mama. It's nice if you can do +1s, but it's very common now not to, especially if the guest will know a number of people at the wedding.
posted by rebecca 989 posts 5 months agoI'm basically on the same place with everyone who replied. We invite significant others and fiance only. That's hard enough for us. No boyfriend/girlfriend, unless we know them. We put "and guests" for singles whom we thought are more conservative, but probably just a couple of them.
From our point of view, it really is the budget issues. We don't mean to be rude at all, but we really hope that the people that we invite are being understanding enough (which we believe so) that all of this comes from our own pocket and we are certainly not a millionaire at this point. :)
I'm engaged but it's a long distance relationship so I guess I'm used to going to weddings as a solo (even though the invitation comes with "and guest"). It's a bit hard for me at first, but it's not that hard, really! What I usually do is just making sure that I know at least a couple or a few people so I can at least sit with someone I know. Besides, i personally think it's not really as much fun to have to babysit your date in your friend's wedding. Just my opinion.
posted by quickbrownfox 39 posts 5 months agoI'll echo what everyone here has said already. Its hard to imagine, but your friends plus one could cost her friend and his fiance upwards of $200 depending on what kind of wedding they are having. My guess is your friend feels like she is being singled out and being "punished" because she isnt in a relationship. I say that because, before I knew how much weddings cost, I felt the same way once or twice
But that isnt the case at all, its really just about the cost and, even more importantly, being surrounded by as many loved ones as possible - even if it means forgoing a few plus ones.
posted by jcabc 103 posts 5 months agoIt isn't the "new etiquette" at all. Per Emily Post and Miss manners, only people who are married, or living together/engaged must be allowed to bring dates. Otherwise, if they can swing it they can, and if they can't, they aren't doing anything wrong. Your friend is out of line to be so insulted by this.
posted by ninanina 48 posts 5 months agoYour friend must not be very close with the bride and the groom if she's not going because she can't bring a friend. Like everyone else, we're not inviting an "and guest" unless they're serious because we don't have the space or the money.
posted by jma19 364 posts 5 months agoIn short: no ring, no bring!
posted by adela 52 posts 5 months agoI have a friend who dropped out of a wedding party because he wasn't allowed to bring his girlfriend. It's a long story, but basically, the couple planning the wedding told their single (at the time) groomsmen a year before the wedding that they wouldn't be allowed to bring dates. Nine months from the wedding, one groomsman got a girlfriend. Two months before the wedding, he got an invite, sans guest. (The couple had a "only engaged or living together" rule for guests.) He, and his girlfriend, were livid, and he fought with the couple about bringing his girlfriend to the wedding, to the rehearsal dinner, and they finally dropped him from the wedding party.
Many people say that it is rude to not allow your groomsmen to bring a guest, especially not a fairly serious girlfriend. But when I spoke to the couple in question, the bride said, "I had friends of my own I wasn't able to invite because of the money. I wasn't going to sacrifice MY friends so that he could bring his girlfriend."
I have a number of friends getting married next summer, and the ones that are not particularly close to my boyfriend (who I live with and have been with for four years and am basically engaged to) I've already told that they shouldn't feel the need to invite him as well. I know how much dinner will cost them, and I'm going to have just as much fun without him, hanging out with my friends.
I think its fine to invite somebody without a guest as long as they will know at least one other person at a wedding. Otherwise, they should be allowed to bring someone.
posted by edb 41 posts 5 months agoOMG do weddings cost a LOT! Agreed with all previous posters...and being a budget bride, we're only allowing our married/engaged/long-term relationship (at least 1 year together & we both must know the boyfriend/girlfriend) friends bring a guest. No strangers at this wedding...why would anyone want to pay for a stranger?
Anyways..if your friend was truly your friend, he/she would go to your wedding no matter what...dateless and all. I went stag to a wedding even though I had been with my guy for 6 years; I understood her situation.
posted by reesey 68 posts 5 months agoI agree with others. This is not new etiquette.
I too, in the past would feel slighted if I was invited to
a wedding (and not a guest).
But now that I am planning our wedding I totally understand and
had to cut out the "& guests". It wasn't to be mean or even b/c
we didn't want to, but it was a space problem. There were only a
certain amount of seats and we had to cut back A LOT.
And like someone already said, it's hard to leave another guest
(possibly family) out just so that another friend can bring a "guest"
(who quite possibly never even met the couple getting married!)
So the person who was invited alone, should not be uspet about
not having a choice to bring someone....but should be thinking
how honored they are to be invited at all!
posted by 711 2 posts 5 months agoEven before I started planning my wedding, I totally didn't get the random wedding date thing. I mean really, doesn't it raise too many questions? If you've been dating long enough to wonder where your relationship is going, it's a lot of pressure. If you're the date who doesn't know anyone, how much fun are you going to have watching these people you don't even know exchange vows, and meeting all their elderly aunts and uncles?
That said, have both venue size and budget limitations - for a total capacity of about 150. Since I have a pretty large family, and we have a lot of married friends, we had to exercise some judgement with the single folks. We called each of them to ask if there was someone special whose name we should include on the invitation (our nice way of saying if you automatically know who you would bring, they are invited - if not, you are invited alone). Three of them had answers right away, and so we did include their SOs (none of whom we have met, but all of whom we had heard about previously, so we knew they were dating).
One other single guy asked if he could bring his daughter, whom we also know fairly well, so we said yes. Two additional single people RSVP'd with dates that we don't know - however, since they are travelling from St. Croix and South Carolina (to our wedding in Washington State) we're going to give them the plus-ones - after all, lots of people don't like to travel alone. Three local singles (actually friends of FI's daughter, not our friends per se) asked to bring dates, and were told that we couldn't accomodate that. As far as I can tell, they have no problem going as a group of girls to dinner or the movies, so I can't see how they can't have fun as a group of girls at our wedding. And we do have a number of single guys their age invited, so there shouldn't be any shortage of people to hang out or dance with.
I feel like we have been really reasonable - but first of all, we really don't want people we don't even know at our wedding. Secondly, at about $70 per guest, we don't feel bad about not wanting to feed and entertain people who don't even know us. And at the end of the day, anyone who decides they would rather stay home, or maybe catch dinner and a movie with their SO at their own expense, didn't really want share the day with us all that badly - so it's no great loss. We did try to be very polite to everybody, regardless of the answer we gave them.
I should also say, since we are keeping things pretty small in the first place, there is actually nobody invited who won't know at least a dozen people there - so the argument that somebody who comes without a date will feel lonely and out of place really doesn't wash with us.
posted by suzanno 1,981 posts 5 months agosadly, this happens. We allowed boyfriends/girlfriends, but only if it had been a while, no one could bring someone they had gone on a few dates with. But if she is single, I don't get what the big deal is. You really aren't supposed to bring a random person with you to someone's wedding. I definitely don't think the "only if you're living together" thing is fair. some people are long distance, but can be in a relationship for years, some could want to wait until marriage, etc...I also don't like when I was dating my husband and some family had met him, but he wasn't invited. Just because we weren't engaged yet doesn't mean we weren't going to be someday, you know? I understand budget issues. I do however think each case is different and should be considered before saying absolutely yes or no to dates.
posted by dreambml 429 posts 5 months agoAfter reading all these posts, I'm glad I wasn't complete alone AND realize i can actually be a little more stringent too. I love the "no ring no bring" and am thinking Maybe we should implement the "no ring, no bring" or the "one house or (future) spouse" rule to include co -habitants - for the plus one rule...
posted by amy77jc 24 posts 5 months ago