Attending a wedding where you don't know the bride or groom
Hi Everyone,
So I'm attending a wedding this weekend with my boyfriend. He and +1 were invited so obviously he put my name down on the invite. I have never met the bride and I believe I've only met the groom once and I can't really remember his face.
Normally when I go to events be it a BBQ, in house party, etc, I know at least a group of people. This is my boyfriend's coworker and I'm hoping that some of his other coworkers that I know will be there as well. If not, I will only know my boyfriend.
My question is, how do you avoid looking like the awkward person who doesn't know anyone at the party and was tacked on as a plus one? I'm normally outgoing and I'll try talking to people if I know a group but if none of my bf's other friends were invited I won't know anyone and I get so weird around strangers. I'll kind of go into my own little shell and I want to avoid that. What do you to maintain that confidence to say hello and start conversations and not cling to the SO at your side?
Edit: I lied, I've been in this situation so I do know how I respond when I am attending an event and don't know anyone.
Re: Attending a wedding where you don't know the bride or groom
Hopefully they are nice and you can meet people
Wow! This is all very helpful. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is like this. The last time I went somewhere and I absolutely did not know anyone else was this training for my previous company and we just focused most of our time on that. I was the only woman in the class and it was really nerve wracking. One older gentleman reached out to me and I was able to talk to him and coincidentally he was from my neck of the woods. But if he hadn't done that I honestly would have just kept taking the class (it was 5 days long) and then headed straight to the hotel.
I will most definitely have a drink. I'm bringing cash just in case it is a cash bar because based on what everyone says it most definitely is liquid courage.
I feel a lot better knowing how to deal with this :-) I believe my boyfriend won't just leave me and wander off. He is really great about that kind of thing but I've never been to a huge event with him so you never know. He could get distracted or something. No fault through his own. So I want to be prepared. I'll try the ice breakers after I've had some alcohol in my system. I don't want to end up being that weird girl sitting in the back alone. lol
Oh that's what you meant! Okay, that makes way more sense :-) I'll keep that in mind then. Thanks!
This makes me think of when I went to a wedding with a bf long ago (an ex now). I think it was 2 weeks after our first date (or something like that), and it was his college friends but really just a few of them at that I think and all were in the wedding party. He said hello to them after the wedding, about 3 min of chatting even though he hadn't seen them in a while, and then we realized there was like a 3+ hour gap or something before the reception and after about 45 min of randomly walking around a college campus by the church we said F-it and came back home (totally his decision). Probably a blessing in disguise because he was social awkward in groups and if the only people he knew were in the wedding party it would have been a lot of silence or me trying to meet new people so we weren't just sitting alone.
Now that I think about it it was crappy of us to ditch the reception since that means they paid for 2 people who didn't show. Ooops sorry guys. Although don't have a 3 hour gap and we would have gone.