Confessions of a wedding etiquette nature

larrygaga

I think we made this thread once a month.

What etiquette rule have you broken? I'm sure there's one.

I have a really bad one. FMIL and I had been fighting non-stop about this guest list. Thankfully, we got over it, compromised and are okay again. I know I've posted about it before. Right as invites were going out, she asked to invite her cousin and her husband. I said sure, because I wasn't ready to fight again, and when you already have 200 people invited, 2 more doesn't matter much.

However, after I agreed to send the invite and FMIL told the cousin that she was invited, FMIL broke the news that this specific lady always brings her 6 grown children and their families, uninvited to other events.

 BOMB DROPPED. 

FMIL told me that I need to write on the invite that the invite is only for her and her husband, because she won't pick up on the fact that her entire giant family is not invited. Even if the envelope is only addressed to them. I was freaked out, and I didn't know what to do. I don't know this lady, neither does my FI. 

so I wrote on the invite in pen that the invite was only for COUSINS NAME and COUSINS HUSBANDS NAME due to limited seating. 

I felt sick doing it, but her RSVP came back with her only bringing her husband. I guess it worked. I think the best thing I ever did for myself is put a number attending line on my RSVPs.

I'm glad to get that off my chest. Please continue to love me, guys.

theartistformerlyknownas

I still love you Larry.

lurkergirl

I still love you.  I sent an invitation to a family where the grown kids still live at home, and I didn't send them their own invitation.  The horror! (sorry, if you dropped out of school and are now slinging weed from your parents' basement I don't count you as an independent adult--I know it's not my place to judge but I kinda do) 

Let's see, what else....Oh, my grandma just recently realized that we left a great aunt off the guest list.  I wouldn't have invited her, but she called and pulled the whole, "I'm coming to visit.  I'll be staying for 3 weeks."  And my grandma was all, "uhhhhhhh....That's when lurker's wedding is....your invitation must have been lost in the mail."  D'oh!  So, now she's coming without an invitation. 

climbingsingle

I still love you girl.

My h wore a tuxedo IN THE DAYTIME!

luckya23

I'm having FI tell his mother that his young female cousins are in fact not going to be in the wedding party (as acolytes), and I don't want the ugly candlesticks that they were going to light anyway.

He's not really on board with this either, but 1. she shouldn't have assumed to ask these kids, and 2. I don't want any "wedding party" including and especially my nephew as ring bearer and if these kids are "in the wedding" it will cause more of a shit storm with my family. 

He wouldn't mind having nephew as well, who will be just turning 2, "because it's not his fault" but I haven't spoken to my sister (his mother) since October and since nephew won't remember being in the wedding, I'm not having her as any part of my wedding.  I think this thing between me and my sister is not his business, frankly, so it's not his or anyone else's place to tell me to get over it.  75% of my "wedding planning" has centered around this rift with my sister and I am 100% fucking over it.

I'm also not providing any guest transportation between ceremony and reception venue.  Some people seem to have a problem with this.

louxnoelle

I fully planned on a lovely combination of B-listing and/or over-inviting and hoping for "no's," until I lurked here for a hot minute and realized that is the worsttt. Not an actual blunder, but SO embarrassing, especially because I told a few people in my social circle what I was planning on doing like it was sheer brilliance.

Now I want to go back and be like, "Remember that thing I said I was planning on doing? I sucked back then, please disregard."

chibiyui

Our bar had a tip jar. I wasn't willing to die on that hill. 

theartistformerlyknownas

chibiyui said:

Our bar had a tip jar. I wasn't willing to die on that hill. 

Ours did too. I didn't know it was going to be there, and didn't notice it until halfway through the reception. Wasn't worth the fight at that point, and there wasn't that much money in it so I think our guests knew we had it covered.

JCbride2015

We kicked in some money for our engagement party thanks to some extreme pressure from FPILs. I didn't think it was such an etiquette problem at the time-- we were just helping them out, right? Ugh. Now I wish we had declined the party entirely.

Fi swore up and down that a few families with grown children at home would think it was weird and even offensive to receive separate invites. Wasn't a hill I wanted to die on, so those families got one invite for all of them. Everyone else still got separate invites.

kmmssg

When DD #3 got married we put adult only reception. 

Her biomom is one of 7, her stepdad is one of 10 siblings and both sides of the family are notorious for bringing extra guests.  DD and her DH wanted adult only and biomom had a BSC freak out.  BSC biomom wasn't paying a penny for the wedding, DH and I were.

After many phone calls with DD in tears about the demands of all those cousins being invited along with their kids we just bit the bullet and put adult only on the invitation and I did her RSVP's by name so there was no mistaking who was invited.

I had posted for months here about the craziness and even got some love for just biting the bullet on that one.

JennyColada

We didn't have seating during our pre-ceremony cocktail hour* (*15 minutes).

arrippa

We are not planning on having seats for the cocktail hour. There will be seats for all at the ceremony and reception but the cocktail hour will be in a different room with no seats.

theartistformerlyknownas

arrippa said:

We are not planning on having seats for the cocktail hour. There will be seats for all at the ceremony and reception but the cocktail hour will be in a different room with no seats.

Same for ours. There were some built in window seat benches.

climbingsingle

Oh that too. Our cocktail hour was in a lounge/parlor area. There were seats and benches but not for every single guest.

SmileDamnit

~ We had a combination of chair/hay bale seating for our ceremony...

(but at least they were covered!)

~ I encouraged my MIL to wear white.

~ We didn't have assigned seating at dinner.

~ We had a big ass non wedding party when we got back to CO to celebrate all the love with our friends and fam who didn't come to the wedding in MT.

banana468

DH, the GM and our fathers wore tuxes for our 2 PM ceremony. At the reception I saw a tip jar at the bar. It was almost over by the time I saw it and it wasn't worth flipping out.

The spouses of the bridal party did not ride in our limo to the reception. Once at the reception they were together for everything but pictures that we did after dinner. (It was 100 degrees that day. )

julieanne912

On my Save the Dates, I used casual names. Probably will do again on the actual invites since they're FI's guests and he told me to just use the names they go by instead despite me asking him to get their formal names.  

larrygaga

SmileDamnit said:

~ We had a combination of chair/hay bale seating for our ceremony...

(but at least they were covered!)

~ I encouraged my MIL to wear white.

~ We didn't have assigned seating at dinner.

~ We had a big ass non wedding party when we got back to CO to celebrate all the love with our friends and fam who didn't come to the wedding in MT.

whoa that's gorgous

EDIT: So beautiful I forgot how to spell

FiancB

Probably the worst thing I did was kind of dragging my feet on picking bridesmaids and then waiting til the last minute to ask two of them to be co-MOHs. They probably would've liked more advance warning than that. Worked out though. 

For invites, I didn't follow standard wording because even though "request the pleasure of your company" indicates a less formal, nonreligious wedding, I still thought it sounded ridiculously stuffy.  Our invite was one card and an RSVP card, no directions and such. And I put our wedding website in small print on the bottom. Didn't feel like making things complicated. 

[Deleted User]

Our invites are worded such that it's very obvious that we are hosting. Since we are, I didn't think that was weird until I read differently on the Invite board. Oh well, I think zero fucks will be given by any one.

Cookie Pusher

We had a 15 minute gap between our ceremony and when our reception area opened to guests. Because of that, our cocktail hour ended up being 75 minutes. Guests were fully hosted during that time, and we were doing table visits during the last half hour so our guests didn't feel like we abandoned them. Considering everyone kept raving about how amazing the cocktail hour food was, we didn't feel badly about it.

FiancB

Oh yeah, originally we were going to have an hour long cocktail hour during which we would take pictures, but it ended up storming like crazy at that point. So we cut the cocktail hour a bit short, went ahead and served dinner, ate a little, and disappeared for a bit during dinner to finish up pictures while people were busy eating and the weather cleared up a bit. I don't think anyone really missed us. 

doeydo

banana468

FiancB said:

Oh yeah, originally we were going to have an hour long cocktail hour during which we would take pictures, but it ended up storming like crazy at that point. So we cut the cocktail hour a bit short, went ahead and served dinner, ate a little, and disappeared for a bit during dinner to finish up pictures while people were busy eating and the weather cleared up a bit. I don't think anyone really missed us. 

That was our mentality too. Only we did it so we were less likely to fall down and PTFO from heat exhaustion.

ohmrs2014

I didn't necessarily B-list, but it happened. 

I had just started a new teaching job that September and the guest list was already done.  Well I had become really close to the teachers I share a lunch period with and as the time got closer, they kept asking how everything was going.

Enough people RSVPed no and our venue wouldn't do upgrades for the difference, so we had to invite and have at least the guaranteed minimum, so I explained the situation to my coworkers and they were so excited to be going.  One of them actually said "Well, we were going to crash it anyway, at least now we will have seats."  LOL

wandajune6

lolo883 said:

chibiyui said:

Our bar had a tip jar. I wasn't willing to die on that hill. 

Ours did too. I didn't know it was going to be there, and didn't notice it until halfway through the reception. Wasn't worth the fight at that point, and there wasn't that much money in it so I think our guests knew we had it covered.

Ditto. Someone stuck a $20 in there early on and I think most people ignored it after that. It was pretty empty.

littlepep

FI and his parents REFUSED to ask this family friend what her boyfriend's name was so I had to write "and guest". It made me cringe and sad inside  

JennyColada

FiancB said:

Our invite was one card and an RSVP card, no directions and such. And I put our wedding website in small print on the bottom. Didn't feel like making things complicated. 

Oh yea. I put "reception to follow" on our invites despite our reception being at another restaurant down the street. I didn't even provide reception info (like the address).

southernbelle0915

I printed addresses directly on my envelopes. Sorrynotsorry, neither of us have great handwriting and I gave nonefucks about trying to find and hire a calligrapher..

DH wore a tux (4:30 ceremony) and the GMs wore suits. We wanted them to be able to buy and keep a suit versus renting because logic. And DH wanted to wear a tux. His clothes - his choice.

classicalandedgy

We won't have full seating (a combo of standing high-tops and a few four tops seats for those who really can't stand for 45mins) during the cocktail hour either and we will have open seating for the rest of the evening. 

We're also are doing online RSVP's...  

flutteringinfl

We were planning on hosting our own "engagement party." FI really wanted more of our family members to meet before the wedding, so we were thinking of going up north and inviting his family to meet mine. It wouldn't have been a gift giving event, just a get-together. But we're not doing it anymore since we're realizing the expense isn't worth it.

I also committed another one before I started coming here that I'm really ashamed about. I sorta kinda asked my dad if he would contribute to the wedding. He had already mentioned before I got engaged that he would be contributing, and after I started coming here I realized how bad it was. But he's been really sweet and helpful and has told me and FI that he's really excited and wants to help however he can. We haven't asked anyone else to contribute.

Ugh. I still feel like such a gross person.