And Guest…
March 16th, 2007 @ 2:18 pm by Mrs. Kiwi
So many of us are planning weddings on a budget. This may mean having less than spectacular flowers, less guests, different food, a cash bar, etc. This begs the question: are you allowing guests to bring a date?
Amongst my family and friends, those who have boyfriends/girlfriends, have been together a long time. So those significant others will be invited. What about the cousin/friend who is not currently dating someone, but wants to bring a date anyway?
The guest list is usually a huge object of contention between many couples and their families. Although I really don’t want to anger anyone in my family, why would I invite you + guest if there is no one in your life; not even a prospect? It may sound rude, but I really don’t want to invite your date if that means I can’t invite a friend instead.
Our guest list is as large as we can allow. We are paying for every single penny of this wedding, and trying to avoid expensive nights out so we can invite more people. Yeah, I guess I’d be slightly bitter at having to fork over more money for someone I’ve never met, and someone our guest has just met.
If it’s a family member, they’ll certainly have plenty of people to talk to, and will most likely know about 75% of the guests. So is it really wrong to just invite that single person? Of course, this would invite some of the “double standard” comparisons that I just don’t want to deal with. I can slightly understand inviting a friend + date if they won’t know that many people, but what if they will know a handful of people, is it still an uncomfortable situation?
My question is this: for a tightly budgeted wedding, where do you draw the line, guest-wise?
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34 Responses to “And Guest…”
We had a smallish wedding (125) and we invited guests who were significant others, but we didn’t invite casual dates, and I think people understood. Actually no one even mentioned it or even asked to bring a date.
I did make one exception for one of my best friends who didn’t really know anyone there — she brought one of her girlfriends.
Thank you so much for asking this!!! FI and I are allowing our friends to bring dates as well as high-school age (and older) family members. However, I don’t think that children of family friends, even if they are in high school, should be allowed to bring dates…
—>HOW DO I DESIGNATE THIS ON THE INVITATION? Most people I know would simply assume that they can bring dates, but when you are inviting the FAMILY, not just the individual, I really don’t think it’s necessary. Any thoughts would be sooo appreciated!!!
I totally agree with you. Its hard to justify letting someone who is single bring a date when it means that one less person that you wanted to invite that you can’t. My fiance and I drew the line where if we didn’t know the last name of the person you are dating, then they aren’t getting an “and guest.” Some people might think this sounds harsh, but when everything is SO expensive and the guest list is limited, you have to draw the line somewhere. If I were you, I wouldn’t make exceptions for people who don’t know a lot of people. I have been to many a wedding as a single girl where I didn’t know a lot of people and I was always just fine!
Good luck!
We are on a budget too and paying for 90% of it. We are allowing dates if 1) our guest lives with a SO of 2) our guest will know no on else there. I don’t want to pay for people to eat and drink that I don’t even know, plus our list already exceeds the capacity of our venue!
I would rather invite more of our friends/co-workers then let every single person bring a guest.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with inviting single people without a guest. Of course, if someone’s in a recognized long-term relationship, you invite the other person. Otherwise, it’s exactly as you said–you’re inviting strangers, and weddings just cost too much money! Besides, everyone knows that weddings are great places to meet potential dates. That’s what Wedding Crashers was all about. OK, Wedding Crashers was about meeting people for sex, but close enough. Luckily, this is not such an issue for us, as we’re having a small wedding–fewer guests overall–and we’re older so most of our relatives and friends are married or otherwise coupled.
I have heard it is rude. I always felt that it discriminates and places a value judgment on single women in particular.
We were on a budget too. We did not add and guest to anyone’s invite. If we didn’t know the name of their SO at the time of invites, odds are they are not important, and may not even be around for the wedding! Fortunately, most of our friends were going to know at least 5 other people there.
Unfortunately, this did not stop people from inviting dates anyway. It only added about 15 people, so it was not a problem, but it could have been if there were more!
Very timely post! I just got done having a series of discussions with my FMIL on this topic–my FSIL is single and wants to bring “a friend” (ie one of her random girlfriends) to the wedding, and I absolutely put my foot down on this. She’ll have all her relatives at the wedding, so there will be lots of people to talk to. I’m sure she’ll get in a snit over it, but whatever–our guest list is just too tight to let her bring a friend for no good reason.
Same goes for my high school/college friends who will have lots of friends there anyway–unless they’re engaged or married (or might as well be), they’re date-less.
What people need to understand is…THIS IS YOUR WEDDING. You can do whatever YOU want…and that includes cutting your guestlist to family and friends w/ Long term significant others. That is what I am doing as well.
I think you can avoid the double standards comparison if you apply some criteria that would make it seem less objective, such as a minimal time period of dating. For example, your friend could bring his girlfriend if they’ve been dating for six months, but your cousin can’t bring a girl he just met.
I don’t think its rude. However, inviting singles may mean spending just a bit more time on your seating arrangements to make sure those singles are with people with similar backgrounds or tastes, or who you simply know are friendly and welcoming.
Sorry, I meant to say criteria that would make it seem less SUBJECTIVE.
I draw the line at engaged. If they’re just boyfriend/girlfriend, we only invite them. We just cannot afford to have extra guests, so we’re specifying on the envelope and RSVP card how many seats we are reserving for them.
Tessa same with us. For those friends of mine who are in relationships but I don’t know their other half, their partner is only being invited if they are married or if they are travelling far enough they they have to fly in for the wedding and are staying several days, because it’s not much fun to travel alone.
Jilly, the way I’ve seen this addressed is the same way you do things if a couple has children but you’re not inviting the kids. Address the invitation only to the invited people, and on the reply card leave a place where they can enter the number of people that are RSVP’ing on that card. If they enter more people than you had invited, then a follow up phone call is in order to explain the situation as politely as possible (but stick to your guns!) If you want to minimise this problem, I recently saw someone write on the RSVP card (was it on Weddingbee?):
__ of __ happily accept
__ of __ regretfully decline
And if you are only inviting one person then you handwrite the number “1″ into the second blank space on each line so they should get the hint that you are not giving them the option of inviting a guest.
In response to putting the number of seats on rsvp cards… this is what we did, and it worked really well. We are on a tight budget, paying for our own wedding and didn’t want unknown guests.
For our single friends the rsvp says:
“A seat has been reserved in your honor”
For those in a group:
“___ seats have been reserved in your honor”
We filled in the blank before sending out. I felt a lot better using the word “A” instead of the number “1″.
This was a tough one for us also. A couple friends of ours are getting married in a few months and we’re in the same circle of friends… so we both set the same rules just to avoid any confusion. We’re only allowing a guest if the couple lives together, are married or engaged. We are already over our room limit and I had originally wanted a very small wedding. My FI has a big Italian family though so that idea went right out the window the moment we got engaged. But we’ve spread the word around to our single or friends who have new gf/bf’s that it’s a very tight guestlist. But everyone will know someone at the wedding for sure either way. And if they don’t…. they’ll just have to make some new friends! =)
We decided to go with cheaper catering (hello On the Border) so that we could invite more guests and their respective “and guests”. So far we are still within budget and our friends can bring dates. Honestly most of them opted not to bring a date unless they were already in a relationship.
Wonderful post.. I’m having this problem too, and we’re only in the initial stages of a guest list. I have lived with the same 8 girls since I started college 3 years ago. They’re all invited, (of course) and although I’m pretty close with their bfs as well, the only bf that will be invited to the wedding is the one who is a mutual friend with the FI and myself. I have one close girlfriend from out of state who is allowed to bring her bf because she won’t know a blessed soul at the wedding… and if she comes all the way from Florida, I want to make sure she has a great time. Many of our friends from home our mutual-friend-couples… so in those cases, they can both come! I guess it’s pretty subjective, but I can’t figure out how else to do it. We’re really not old enough that we have any close friends who are married/engaged.
because we had so many of our friends we couldn’t include on the guest list, we were very strict when it came to bringing a date. only if they were boyfriend/girlfriend AND we knew them- at least met them, did we allow it. there was one person that we know of that was bothered by this, but nobody else asked about a date and seemed to understand completely about our tight guest list situation. i think as long as you have some certain “rule” and stick with it (ie. try not to make excpetions bc that’s when things can get oogly), hopefully your friends will understand! wait until they have to plan their own wedding! haha. that’s what i always tell people. but yeahhh i hear you on the budget/guest list dilemma. good luck miss kiwi!
I’ve seen something clever recently where on the response card they put in for example
___ Accepts ____ of 2 people
____ Regrets
where they pre fill in the number of people you are allowed to bring.
That’s always an option of quietly informing the people they can’t bring more than you anticipate.
For our wedding, we are allowing our friends to bring their significant others (at least of a year), including same sex couples. If you’re single, it’s an opportunity to meet other singles, so no, you do not get to bring a guest. I don’t think it’s polite to not invite someone’s significant other simply because you haven’t met them; especially if it’s a long distance friend. I say that because I have been invited or my fiance has been invited to weddings in the past where this was the case, and it actually was a great opportunity for introductions. If your single friends do not understand now, they will when they are engaged 
We decided from the beginning that all singles 18 or older would be invited “+ one” We had to remove a handful of people from our final guest list, and gently but firmly turn down my FMIL when she asked for yet more additions, but for me it’s worth it to know that there won’t be any “lonely only’s” feeling unhappy at an event designed to celebrate our happiness.
We decided early on that one priority was to have everyone we loved be able to celebrate with us with people that they loved too (or even those that made it more fun for them!) So we had a little less fancy food and let everyone bring whomever they wanted. It actually all evened out between those people that didn’t bring anyone and those who asked if they could bring someone.
We are doing a +1 for all of our single guests. About 50% of our guests are OOT, so that was a big factor.
We haven’t met a lot of the dates, but our friends are spread out all over the country. Heck, I haven’t even seen some of our guests in the past year!
If you are going to draw the line somewhere, I think a time limit makes more sense than dating vs. engaged. My FI and I dated for 4 years before we got engaged.
I think that it’s better to have everyone have the night they want and invite fewer people than to make a judgement call about whether the person is with the person long enough etc….I have been that person at a wedding and hated it, and missed my then boyfriend now fiance very much. But I understand the issues for people, we just chose to reduce our list and allow those closest to us to have the night that they most wanted to have- date or no date.
That said, lots of people have said in advance that they wouldn’t bring a date, in order to free it up for us. And a few are really excited that we didn’t exclude them from the “and guest” list because they are sick of being excluded with all the weddings they go to.
I agree with Chrissie. My fiance and I dated for almost 6 years before we got engaged and I would have been completely offended if I didn’t get invited to a wedding that he was going to simply becuase we weren’t living together or engaged yet! I think that’s a bad criterion.
We are inviting everyone at our wedding that is 16 or over with a guest because we want everyone to have FUN! Most of the people in our wedding party however, do not have a SO and so they are opting to come alone rather than bring a date–as are a few others.
But I think that you have to consider the feelings of the friend you are inviting. Saying that you would rather pay for a friend to eat and drink rather than someone you don’t know make sense, but that’s just the way it goes is situations like this.
agreed, Roslyn- that’s what we are doing. I think when people show up and have a boyfriend that didn’t make the cut and see others with dates, it’s a tough sell to explain why…
We can only fit 100 people in our ceremony site, so unless we know their SO (or know they’ve been dating for a while), we aren’t inviting “and guests.” FI has a lot of younger cousins who are used to going to more casual “potluck” type weddings where they can bring a bunch of friends, so hopefully we won’t have a problem
i am a firm believer that you should invite everyone of an appropriate age (say 16-18 and above) with a guest. don’t you want your wedding guests to have fun and feel as though you respect and appreciate them for attending your wedding, traveling, and getting you a gift, etc.? most people who want to bring a guest will, and those we do not have anyone to bring, won’t. i don’t think it is appropriate for you, as the inviter, to make the decision for them. it shows a lack of respect and can sometimes be downright mean. i will never forget how i upset i was to be invited alone to a wedding only to get there and see that all of my other single girlfriends had dates - when i asked they said that they were invited with guests - but because i was not quite as close with the bride - i was invited alone. it was an out-of-town wedding and i didn’t know anyone - that meant traveling by myself, staying alone in a hotel room, and sitting out a lot of dances and also feeling like crap because i was seen as “lesser” than the others. just another point of view. i was just married in october, and while a wedding is mostly all about the bride and groom, don’t lose sight of common manners when considering this issue and remember that everyone at your wedding is a GUEST and by having a wedding you have taken on the responsibility of entertaining them and treating them well.
We’re limited to 170 people, maximum, to fit into our ceremony space. In order to cut our guest list down to this side — if you’re not engaged/married, you don’t get to bring a guest. I know it’s harsh, but we don’t have a single non-engaged/married friend who wouldn’t have other friends present. I think it’s going to be a little tough making sure my fiance follows this rule (I’ve caught him telling friends “Don’t worry, if other people cancel, we can fit in your girlfriend”) but I’m going to put my foot down — my friends will whine if his friends get to bring a date. The way we are justifying it is that it is most important for us to have our friends celebrating with us (especially when 80% of the guests are friends of our parents who we don’t even know), and if they don’t care about us enough to sacrifice one evening without their girl/boyfriends, then maybe we don’t want them there anyway. Like I said, harsh, but we need to cut people down.
Of course we all wish we could have a wedding with the best of everything, not leaving out anyone or limiting our guests’ guests, etc. But when you simply DO NOT HAVE the money, the decision is pretty much made for you. For me it’s not about “saving” money, but rather a simple lack of it that makes the decision for me. When you have the means to even have the ability to make a decision, you may not even think twice, but as sad as it is, money makes the majority of the decisions in one’s life. I think it does depend on the dynamic of your guests, but everyone that I can think of has a least a few other people that would be present that they would feel comfortable spending a night conversing/drinking/dancing with.
it is and it isn’t about money-most everyone has a budget in terms of guest list size or money and are faced with the same decisions. Of course if we all had limitless amounts of money, that’s another story and obviosuly guests would be invited. But I disagree that having a limited budget decides the guest issue for anyone- it’s a value and judgment call.
We have a limited budget but would rather have fewer people with guests and make those tough decisions about who are most important to us than to have more people that might feel the way jaclyn felt (and I have felt in the past). Guests are shelling out lots of money to come to weddings, we aren’t the only ones dealing with cost issues. I would rather have 75 of my closest people have a blast at our wedding than being harsh with the guests.
I do agree that it depends on your dynamics with family and friends- some groups don’t think twice about it, and wouldn’t be hurt if they weren’t invited with a guest.
We’re inviting guests with girlfriends/boyfriends, fiance(e)s or spouses, and we don’t WANT any random extra dates, but I don’t think I’m going to really be able to put my foot down. I already have the one friend in the military who excitedly told me his girlfriend as of…a week ago…can come to the wedding! But he’s stationed out of the country so this will be his FIRST CHANCE to see her after they upgraded their relationship status from friendship, so I know it’s a lot of WHY he’s requesting leave so I couldn’t say anything. Blah. And I also HATE the “engaged or married only” rule, since I lived with Mr. Bluebell for 3 years prior to getting engaged and was invited as a single to a wedding where I knew not a soul. I think that’s a really unfair distinction, so I would set the rule at something like a dating time limit instead if you have to cut people back to a definitive number. There are enough judgments on “married” vs “living in sin” that I was just reeeally uncomfortable with the fact that my relationship wasn’t seen as “valid” by random girl I was friends with, you know?
We invited EVERYONE we wanted and even got to flip to the back pages of our address books, because there were waves of people who couldn’t come because they were on the other side of the planet (they live there or were there per the military), were about to burst preggers, were chicken to travel in winter, were in school, etc. Start with the “A list” but also include the “unlikely-to-come list” and you will be at peace that they were invited. People were very touched that they were invited to bring a guest and their children.
OH — and your advance nose count for the caterer should be rounded down a bit (10%) so you don’t overpay for no-shows (there will be more no-shows than add-ons).
Mrs. Kiwi, Los Angeles
Age and Occupation in 06: 27, Bookkeeper
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, P.E. Teach/Coach @ private schools in LA
Engagement Date: March 31, 2006
Wedding Date: November 3, 2007
Venue: Radisson Hotel
About Me: I'm a bookkeeper who failed high school algebra. I'm currently living in Los Angeles, literally a street over from where I grew up with Mr. Kiwi, my honey of three years. We have a jumbo mini-dachshund (seriously, he's huuuuge), and we're planning an autumn themed wedding on a shoestring, paid for by ourselves. The wedding date is my late grandma's birthday, I needed her there somehow, and that seemed like the best way for us. I can't believe I'm a Bee! I couldn't be more proud!
This has probably been our biggest issue with our wedding — not b/c of budget constraints so much, but b/c our wedding just balloons and balloons and balloons in size. I gave up my dream of having a small wedding a LONG time ago.
Our criteria is: if you’re coming from very far away, you get to bring a date. If you wouldn’t know anyone otherwise, you get to bring a date. If you’re engaged or in a long-time relationship, you get to bring a date EXCEPT for family members (like teenaged cousins) who will know lots of folks anyway.
Godspeed with this one - I feel for ya. I’m just terrified we’re going to invite people w/o guests and they’ll bring ‘em anyway!