Guest Social Media Etiquette?

Re: Guest Social Media Etiquette?

• Jen4948 member

  

  November 2014

  Well, no one here is going to give you "permission" to be rude and call anyone a "stupid asshat" and probably most people here will tell you that it's both rude and futile to try to control what anyone else posts on Facebook.
  
  The two things you can do are 1) limit what you share with others, on Facebook and elsewhere, to what you're comfortable with being shared by others, and 2) refrain from dignifying any boorish suggestions about attendance by non-guests and other inappropriate comments with answers. Let them fall flat.

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• beethery member

  

  November 2014 edited November 2014

  I'd be deleting my facebook, personally.

  
  

  Anyone who posts your invitations or STDs can be asked to take it down for privacy reasons. Just message them and explain that you're trying to keep things low-key. You should definitely untag yourself from that kind of shit and then politely ask them to remove it. If they act like an ass about it, well, they're an ass. Expressing happiness for someone is one thing, blowing up their invitation or STD on facebook publicly and then tagging the person in it is a whoooooooole other and is rude and thoughtless as hell.

  
  

  Anyone who thinks they're being invited (and isn't going to be) and directly talks to you about can be told, "We haven't finalized the guest list yet," or bean-dipped. You don't owe them an invitation and you don't need to feel bad about sticking to the guest list you planned.

  
  

  Don't post a passive-aggressive status about it. Wait til the wee hours of the morning, untag yourself, and message people to ask them to remove stuff if you really feel like it's necessary.

  
  

  And really consider deactivating your facebook. Sounds like a lot of people feel that since you're friends on there, and they can contact you over that platform, they deserve an invitation.

  
  

  I repeat, if anyone gets pissy about it, that is 100% their problem.

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  I'm the fuck out.

  
  

  
  

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• lc07 member

  

  November 2014

  lebeers said:

  During the course of our engagement we've had a lot of social media moments that have really made me cringe. These have recently included--but are not limited to--guests posting pictures of save-the-dates and invitations, braggart wedding party status updates with proposal gift pictures, posts on our Facebook walls regarding received invites, and even a few people very publicly calling us out of their MIA invites.

  I have basically taken the approach of ignoring all of these (with the exception of my bridesmaids, whom I told to knock that shit off in the kind way you do when you consider someone a sister). But the following events in the past 24 hours are making me B-A-N-A-N-A-S:

  • This post on my Facebook wall: "I'm booking my next flight home, send me the wedding info already! Can't wait to see you guys and celebrate with you, LOVE YOU!!!" (This girl is not only not invited, but is someone that I have not spoken with since she moved four years ago. Super sweet girl, but we were not good friends to begin with and we hung out maybe half a dozen times times.)
    
    
  • A friendly acquaintance via Facebook post asked my girlfriend [invited, recently moved across the country] "I miss you, when are you coming home?" My guest's response: "For {tags me AND my fiance]'s wedding!! We're gonna partyyyy and you're gonna meet the new boy-toy " (For the record, this new 'boy-toy' is news to me and is definitely not on our seating plan. Is this her way of announcing him to us?! Also, this other girl is not invited and there is no reason for anyone to assume she would come to our wedding; she had a standing invite our post-college keggers many years ago, but I don't think either of us have had an actual conversation with her. And, y'know, those parties cost us about a buck per person.) 
    

  I don't think that any of these people are trying to be malicious or even presumptuous. Us brides/Knotties hold people to pretty high etiquette standards, but most people operate in the weird world of public domain, where every thought and life event is shared with the universe without a second thought. 

  But my fiance and I have gotten to the point where we feel like we need to address this. It's not okay with us for our guests to talk about the details of our wedding, very publicly, to people that aren't invited. We also feel terrible ignoring these inquiries--even from people that we never considered inviting but also never considered close friends; we don't even have their numbers to call them and explain they aren't invited (and should we have to anyway?)! We feel like we're being punished for our all-inclusive party rule from the olden days! OUR 300-GUEST HALLOWEEN 2007 PARTY HAD A DIFFERENT GUEST LIST, Y'ALL.)

  I feel like it's terrible etiquette to announce a friend's wedding details or roundabout invite yourself to a wedding via social media. But it feels like WAY worse etiquette to shut someone down for their genuine excitement about your wedding day and then tell them to delete that garbage off your Facebook page, or delete it yourself. Ugh. Suggesting someone is being rude when they're just trying to express being happy for you is basically the ultimate in bad etiquette [etiquette irony? Etiqueception]!

  
  

  What is the best way to handle these uncomfortable moments? Should I talk to the offenders as directly if possible (or message them for phone numbers...awkwardness), continue to be strategically absent from social media (avoidance), or untag myself from these posts (passive-aggression)?
  Or will you all give me permission to post a Facebook status update explaining to people that this behavior is totally ridiculous and they are stupid asshats complicating my already stressful wedding planning process?! I can just share this post to Facebook, right?!...'cause that would be way easier.

  
  What is a proposal gift? Also, no, you would look tacky as Hell to make a passive aggressive FB post. Do not engage with people who are not invited unless they have asked you a direct question, in which case you would privately message them if you do not have a more direct and private way of communicating. It's fine to politely contact your nearest and dearest who you HAVE invited who have posted something on FB and let them know that you weren't able to invite everyone to your wedding and would prefer to keep wedding talk off of FB.

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• Knottie48804623 member

  

  November 2014

  Pretty sure she was being sarcastic about actually posting a status guys

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• saric83 member

  

  November 2014

  This certainly won't fix all of it, but both you and your fiance should either take down your walls temporarily or update the setting where no one can post on it nor tag you in anything until you approve it. 

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• lebeers member

  

  November 2014

  Yes, I was kidding. SARCASM, GUYS. I am not making any silly social media posts. I was trying to express the inner bride in all of us that wants to say, in a public forum, "ATTN: EVERYONE IS AWFUL." Not actually going to happen. [Thank you Knottie48804623.]

  
  

  lc07 by "proposal gifts" I mean little presents we made for our bridal party to ask them to be our bridesmaids/groomsmen. We found vintage cigar boxes and loaded them nips, self-engraved glasses, home-made macarons, and self-calligraphed cards. They were psyched to receive them and, as a crafy couple, we had a lot of fun making them. Highly recommended project for anyone that enjoys that kind of thing.
  

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• southernbelle0915 mod

  

  November 2014

  I would be getting after my privacy settings if I were you. No one can tag you, post on your wall, see your wall history, etc. Literally all someone could do would be to send you a PM and see your profile picture. I'd keep it that way til the wedding is over.
  
  About people inviting themselves...either ignore them or privately tell them you're sorry but you're keeping it smaller and couldn't invite everyone you wanted to.
  
  About the girl with the "boy toy" (what is she? 14?), if they're dating, you need to invite him.
  
  Good luck!

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• charlieyankee03 member

  

  November 2014

  I definitely would be updating my profile settings to maximum security. This way, you can just reject tags and handle issues away from Facebook. I would tell my friends that inquire about it that I'm not sharing anything about the wedding until it's over so as to avoid hurting people's feelings that aren't invited.

  I would also call your friend about her "boy toy" and find out if she plans on bringing him to the wedding. If they're dating then he needs to be worked into the seating plan (next to her).

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• LadyMillil member

  

  November 2014

  Re: the guest with the "boy toy" - I thought if invitations were already out, which is mentioned in the OP (I think people posted them on FB) and the girl in question was single at the time, the new SO doesn't need to be invited. That it is a nice gesture if you can include new SOs but not required by etiquette.

  
  

  

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• levieenrose member

  

  November 2014

  What Beethery said! Minus deleting FB, that's exactly what we did and it worked just fine. Also, I'm with Southernbelle on inviting your friend's SO. We did that and our friends felt (and still feel, actually) loved and valued. If you can swing it, why not? And about that same friend, she may be visiting with your mutual acquaintance while she's in town, so it might not be that she was trying to invite her.

  Then happy I, that love and am beloved 

  Where I may not remove nor be removed.

   --William Shakespeare (Sonnet 25)

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• novella1186 member

  

  November 2014

  Wow. That's a LOT of facebook bs to deal with. I would be livid if someone posted my invitations and stuff, just for privacy reasons and because it's kind of a rude thing to do. I agree with the PPs, especially with limited your page for a while.
  

  

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• wrigleyville member

  

  November 2014

  Once we sent our STDs, Facebook went into full lockdown mode. We changed our privacy settings so we had to approve all tags, and we changed our wall settings so people couldn't post on our wall. 

  
  

  Any time someone tagged us, we'd get an alert. I'd PM them and ask them to please remove the post. If they didn't comply within several hours, I'd use the "remove this post" option that FB gives you (it sends an official message to them).

  
  

  When someone can't post to your wall, that means they have to PM you. That made it much easier to deal with the, "We can't wait to come to Vegas!" comments. It also prevented my relatives from posting tons of wedding ideas to my wall. That shit got old FAST.

  
  

  If it continues to get out of hand, consider deactivating your FB until the wedding. I really didn't want to do that because many people use FB messaging to get in touch with me about random things, moreso than texting. (The message makes my phone beep, so I get it just as quickly as I would a text.) It simply wasn't worth it to deactivate it and instruct everyone to text me until the wedding.

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