Who does this?

ohwhynot

Fi just popped in to tell me that he emailed an old friend about our upcoming wedding.  Friend wrote back yesterday with his congratulations; very nice.  They worked together about 20 years ago and have kept in intermittent touch since then.  So today fi opens his email to find that friend has asked him "Can I be your best man"?  

He's joking, right?  Who would do this?  This is a man in his late 40s/early 50s - surely he's got to be joking?  

It was bad enough when fi's 14 year old niece asked, point blank:  can I be in your wedding?  But at least she's still a kid.  WTF, people? 

bablingbrooke

No, your engagement is not a state secret.  DH and I met at work and everyone there knew we got engaged, but we only invited the 10-12 we were personally close with out of the 100+ who worked there and we were friendly with.  THEY are in the wrong for presuming.

Do they have good reason for presuming they'll be invited?  Like are they that close? If so, you might want to reconsider that.

emilyinchile

Love CTGirl's response - use that one! Although I too would guess that the guy's joking.

As far as people saying things like "I'll be there," I'd just laugh it off at this stage. As it gets closer, or if people actually directly ask about invitations, then use the "well we can't invite everyone" line. I know I at least had several acquaintances (who I'm not even inviting our our US party) say things like "looks like I'm going to Chile!" (where we're only inviting my immediate family and BMs) when they first heard the news. It was just their way of showing excitement for me; they haven't mentioned it since, and I don't think it was a serious comment.

Kristin789

>>Mark and I are practicing the "we'd love to invite everyone, but we're just not able to do that.  Thanks for thinking of us, though" spiel.  Is there anything better to say? 

Yes.  If you continue to use the pronouns WE and US, people will continue to WEEDLE you to get invited.

We directly put the responsibility elsewhere so that if this person wanted to pursue getting invited, that person would have to call MY PARENTS - and no one is going to do that.

Here's what we used:

"Oh, sorry, but Kristin's parents are hosting the wedding and they've kept the guest list really small, just family really."

>>Is it a faux pas to even mention that you're getting married to people you don't plan on inviting to the wedding? 

Well, I don't think it's a faux pas exactly, but we didn't mention it to people we weren't inviting.

emilyinchile

Kristin, your response doesn't work if the couple is hosting the wedding. I also think it's pretty immature to shift the responsibility onto someone else as though you had no say over your own guest list. OP, if people continue to bug you about it, bean dip (change the subject).

ohwhynot

Kristen, thanks for the suggestion, but we are 43 and 50 years old - we are hosting our own wedding.   Having said that, I didn't mean to imply that younger people aren't hosting their own weddings, only that it would seem exceptionally odd for us middle-agers to be hiding behind mommy's skirts. 

aerinpegadrak

I would just laugh it off, it's probably a joke.  One of FI's female friends asked him if she could be a groomsman.  We both think she was joking, but he did end up asking her to stand on his side.

megk8oz

We had a guy seriously ask if we were including him in the WP ... and he wasn't even somebody we had any intention of inviting at all (And we didn't). We kinda laughed it off and joked about putting the cart before the horse, because at the time we hadn't even set a date yet (And our wedding wound up being well over a year after this conversation). At the time, another friend's wedding was going on, and he apparently was pretty upset that they didn't consider him for a GM either.

Anybody who asked about being invited (There were a couple), we made it very clear that we were footing the entire bill and that we both came from big families with a lot of "must invites" on both sides (Which wasn't a lie, out of our 100 guests, excluding the bridal party, we each got to invite 2 friends-with their S/Os-and that was all we could afford), so we played the "well, if we could invite everybody, we would" card a lot.

And honestly, even with the friends that we left out ... they weren't really close enough to us that we felt bad about it, and we're pretty sure nobody's feelings got hurt. Like I said everybody (Both family and friend) that was a "must" received and invite.

Lolo85

Your fiance needs to reply back... "Naaaaaaw man". A little chuckle chuckle, hehe hehe, ha ha ha, and "how was your weekend dude?" Cause surely your FI's friend must  have been joking, lol.

jeannigirl

People who has a set of b***S thats who. I would totally bean dip that one. use the pp comment "Naaaaaaw man". A little chuckle chuckle, hehe hehe, ha ha ha, and "how was your weekend dude?"