Inviting someone just because they invited you

zoobizoo · 12-11-2015 02:17PM #1

So, went to a couple of weddings of some lads I sort of hang around with. More friends of a friend. Wouldn't be close friends and wouldn't see them that often.

I'm getting married soon enough and about three out of a gang I really wouldn't be close to at all. Would never have met them other than in a group setting organised by someone else.

Add to this, the three never showed at engagement party they were invited to but were having pints down the road three minute walk away.

Inviting half the 'gang' would be awkward. What would you do? I guess it's only an extra six people but there are people I'd rather bring who I see more often and would certainly have more fun with.

Wish I hadn't gone to those weddings now..

Toots · 12-11-2015 02:24PM

Invite the ones you really want there to the whole day, and then invite the rest to the afters.

zoobizoo · 12-11-2015 02:28PM

Wasn't planning on having an afters.

Toots · 12-11-2015 02:33PM

Feck. Afters are usually a handy way to solve that dilemma :pac: If it were me I wouldn't invite them. Just because they invited you to theirs doesn't mean you've got to invite them to yours. If you wanted, you could do a second round if you get a lot of declines, but the people who you're closest to, who you really want there, are the main priority on the guest list.

magicmushroom · 12-11-2015 02:41PM

I wouldn't invite them

Liam McPoyle · 12-11-2015 05:14PM

I had the exact same dilemma. I went to a couple of weddings abfew years ago and the lads are people I would only see rarely and would never instigate catching up with them myself.

Ended up not asking them at all. One of them text me about a week before the wedding asking had his invite got lost!

What about staggering sending the invites ie send out the ones to family etc but don't send them to the group of mates. Depending on how many acceptances ye get you may find you have a few open slots so could fit them in that way?

Black_Knight · 12-11-2015 05:21PM

Business Cat wrote: »

Ended up not asking them at all. One of them text me about a week before the wedding asking had his invite got lost!

It must of got lost in the post, but i'm very superstitious so you best not come. I think its a sign.

stickybookmark · 12-11-2015 05:35PM

I would invite them otherwise it comes across as stingy

zoobizoo · 12-11-2015 05:53PM

Business Cat wrote: »

What about staggering sending the invites ie send out the ones to family etc but don't send them to the group of mates. Depending on how many acceptances ye get you may find you have a few open slots so could fit them in that way?

Was thinking to make sure that the people I really want there get told the date well in advance etc and then maybe send the other invites out a couple of months in advance.

Penny Dreadful · 12-11-2015 05:54PM

stickybookmark wrote: »

I would invite them otherwise it comes across as stingy

So what? People will always have an opinion on how many people you do/don't invite, how much you do/don't spend on whatever.
OP its your wedding. Invite people you want to have there to share the day with you.

One girl (who is the sister of a friend of my husband's and I met only once) invited me to her wedding.....just to make up the numbers. She was short of the minimum numbers needed for hers and so decided to invite me along to make up the numbers. As it turned out I couldn't go as I'd made plans for that day anyway but my husband went and took another friend in my place.
She got the absolute hump that we didn't invite her to our wedding given that she had (oh so graciously) invited us to hers. :rolleyes:

Electric Sheep · 12-11-2015 08:17PM

stickybookmark wrote: »

I would invite them otherwise it comes across as stingy

I wouldn't care too much about the opinions of people who think that not inviting casual aquaintances to my wedding is stingy.

I think it is worse when the couple invites everyone with whom they have a nodding aquaintance just to get more cash gifts.;)

Liam McPoyle · 12-11-2015 10:05PM

As an aside, I find it genuinely perplexing that some people get the hump when they don't get asked to a wedding.

People are mad.

Sligo1 · 12-11-2015 10:16PM

Business Cat wrote: »

As an aside, I find it genuinely perplexing that some people get the hump when they don't get asked to a wedding.

People are mad.

What did you say when your man asked if his invite got lost in the post??? Lol. I'd have such an awkward cringe moment...

Addle · 12-11-2015 10:24PM

Why did you invite them to your engagement party if you're not bothered with them?

Liam McPoyle · 12-11-2015 10:48PM

Sligo1 wrote: »

What did you say when your man asked if his invite got lost in the post??? Lol. I'd have such an awkward cringe moment...

I just said that as he hadn't replied to me about my stag I figured he wouldn't want to go to the wedding!

Sligo1 · 12-11-2015 11:39PM

Business Cat wrote: »

I just said that as he hadn't replied to me about my stag I figured he wouldn't want to go to the wedding!

Ah jeez.... If someone hadn't the curtesy to even reply to an invite to a hen/stag (unless for a really good reason) there's no way I'd bother my arse inviting them to the wedding.

Liam McPoyle · 13-11-2015 08:03AM

Sligo1 wrote: »

Ah jeez.... If someone hadn't the curtesy to even reply to an invite to a hen/stag (unless for a really good reason) there's no way I'd bother my arse inviting them to the wedding.

Oh he completely backed up the truck after that and laughed it off, apologised re the stag and said he was only messing re the wedding.

snickerpuss · 13-11-2015 08:24AM

stickybookmark wrote: »

I would invite them otherwise it comes across as stingy

We didn't invite people whose weddings we had attended, simply because we didn't want to! Had a small wedding and just wanted important people there.

I don't understand the idea that it's stingy though! We went to their wedding - spent money on accommodation, drinks and present etc. Now they don't have to do it in return. So how is it stingy if they're not spending money?

Malari · 13-11-2015 08:53AM

We had a tiny wedding so didn't invite lots of people whose weddings we had been to. I think without exception those people had weddings that were at least 4-5 times bigger than ours, so if we had expanded the circle that wide they would have been invited.

13-11-2015 11:44AM

If we look at it from an Eddie Hobbs point of view, if you went to their wedding you may have brought a gift or given them cash. If you don't invite them they don't have to return the favour.

I don't meant to generalise here, but no man I know has ever taken it personally about not being invited to a wedding, plenty of women I know have though.

clint_silver · 13-11-2015 12:54PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't meant to generalise here, but no man I know has ever taken it personally about not being invited to a wedding, plenty of women I know have though.

About right.

Tarzana2 · 13-11-2015 01:12PM

Business Cat wrote: »

As an aside, I find it genuinely perplexing that some people get the hump when they don't get asked to a wedding.

People are mad.

I wouldn't take the hump at not being asked to a wedding. I would take the hump at being a second wave invitee. Invite me or don't invite me, either of these scenarios is totally fine. Just please don't have me as some inbetweeney, 'sure you'll do to bump up the numbers if needs be' guests.

Maybe sometimes it wouldn't always be obvious that you're a second wave invitee if the first batch was sent out very early. But if you're getting an invite with only a month to go, you're second wave, without doubt. It's a controversial topic, but I just find it unacceptable personally. People know the minimum number required. Decide your guest list, budget to be able to pay the minimum numbers no matter how many people RSVP yes, and have the goddamn courage of your convictions when it comes to deciding who is on your guest list!

stickybookmark · 13-11-2015 01:21PM

snickerpuss wrote: »

I don't understand the idea that it's stingy though! We went to their wedding - spent money on accommodation, drinks and present etc. Now they don't have to do it in return. So how is it stingy if they're not spending money?

Yeah I suppose that is a fair point.

Maybe stingy was the wrong choice of word. It's bad manners might have been a better expression to use.

I invited everyone that had invited me to their wedding, anything else just wouldn't feel right. I knew people who I hadn't had contact with in a while or who didn't want to come wouldn't come but I still invited them. They invited me to theirs, I invite them back - to me it's common courtesy.

If you have a really small wedding obviously the above doesn't apply but we had a normal sized wedding. I didn't want to put people's noses out of joint.

One thing I couldn't do alright was invite people who had invited me to the afters of their wedding to the afters of ours....coz our hotel doesn't have afters. Hope people realised that and didn't just think I didn't bother inviting them back to the afters...

skallywag · 13-11-2015 01:40PM

zoobizoo wrote: »

Add to this, the three never showed at engagement party they were invited to but were having pints down the road three minute walk away.

I would not read too much into this myself to be honest.

Celebrating an engagement is something for close friends and family in my opinion, and not something where anyone outside of that circle should be expected to show up.

Milly33 · 13-11-2015 02:56PM

It starts out all so easy until you start overthinking about it..

Best thing to do is say right do you really want to invite them, which by the sounds of it is no.. They are only friends through friends so really they aren't close friends. Just send them an afters invite and leave it at that..

You never keep everyone happy with weddings so focus on keeping ye happy and work with that.. Still cant believe after ours the people who have fallen out with this person because they weren't invited and family who got the hump. Sad really but Keep yerselfs happy and the rest will get over it.

Even start a new list or something put everyones name down and go right honestly do I want to invite them to the entire day or not, go with your first thought.

ChewChew · 13-11-2015 04:31PM

Definitely only invite exactly who you want at the wedding. No matter what you do someone will have something to say down the line Anyways. I come from Parents who have many siblings (10 on one side, 9 on the other) and so does my partner (10 on one side, 13 on the other) so there's no way we are inviting them. One ain't asked me a few weeks ago was she invited and I told her straight out that no she wasn't. I'm sure she wasn't impressed but I'm not particularly bothered. It's my day so I want at it only people that I actually really want to spend the day with.

Milly33 · 13-11-2015 05:35PM

That the way to do it Chewchew

Tarzana2 · 13-11-2015 08:18PM

ChewChew wrote: »

Definitely only invite exactly who you want at the wedding. No matter what you do someone will have something to say down the line Anyways. I come from Parents who have many siblings (10 on one side, 9 on the other) and so does my partner (10 on one side, 13 on the other) so there's no way we are inviting them. One ain't asked me a few weeks ago was she invited and I told her straight out that no she wasn't. I'm sure she wasn't impressed but I'm not particularly bothered. It's my day so I want at it only people that I actually really want to spend the day with.

Yeah, I come from a family where there aren't many first cousins on either side. Even still, two of my cousins had no invited first cousins to their weddings. Totally up to them and I have to say there were no ruffled feathers within the family because of it.

Invite who you want, OP, and be firm. It's your day.

pwurple · 13-11-2015 10:27PM

This is a doozy. We kept our group very small, because neither of us enjoy big weddings. Of course that meant we didn't invite heaps of people who's wedding we had been to. I have been to weddings of colleagues, or of colleagues of former boyfriends who I didn't invite. Also a couple who had since split up after their wedding, we invited one, but not the other (they no longer got along!).

There was only one person who openly 'got the hump' and demanded an invite. I don't know what his malfunction was to be honest. He had invited us to his 500 person wedding about a decade previously, when I worked with him. We had both moved to different companies since, and had not kept in touch. He had heard through a friend of a friend that we were getting married. We invited him &wife in the end because he got so odd about it, but he didn't know a bloody soul at the wedding as it was just our families. I sat him with my husbands uncles and aunties.

stinkle · 14-11-2015 10:19AM

pwurple wrote: »

There was only one person who openly 'got the hump' and demanded an invite. I don't know what his malfunction was to be honest. He had invited us to his 500 person wedding about a decade previously, when I worked with him. We had both moved to different companies since, and had not kept in touch. He had heard through a friend of a friend that we were getting married. We invited him &wife in the end because he got so odd about it, but he didn't know a bloody soul at the wedding as it was just our families. I sat him with my husbands uncles and aunties.

That's hilarious! We had a relatively small wedding by Irish standards - did have all the aunts/uncles/cousins but no kids (would have only been cousins' kids - feck off and get a babysitter if you're that gone on attending!!!) and close friends we see a lot.

Friends included a couple of workmates that I was, and am still close to and socialised with outside of work. This ruffled feathers in work apparently, despite me not being invited to any work wedding previously. I was already keeping wedding talk under wraps so as not to offend the divorcing colleague and the jilted colleague, so they barely even had a clue there was a wedding happening at all. No way was I gonna stress about who to sit the boss and the work oddballs with. It seemed so un-Irish at the time but oh so right in hindsight to just invite who you want. It may have been a tiny bit awkward in the run-up but in the long run felt great to be able to be upfront an unapologetic about who we wanted there.

Tarzana2 · 14-11-2015 03:13PM

Tarzana2 wrote: »

Yeah, I come from a family where there aren't many first cousins on either side. Even still, two of my cousins had invited first cousins to their weddings. Totally up to them and I have to say there were no ruffled feathers within the family because of it.

Invite who you want, OP, and be firm. It's your day.

I meant to say here that they invited NO first cousins to their weddings. Edited to clarify!

Inviting someone just because they invited you

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