Ultimate Wedding: Guest List

For years Miss Ultimate Wedding let pass without comment (or much interest) the first rule of planning a wed-ding that she knew bridal couples are commonly told. Figure out the size you want your wedding to be, they are cautioned. This is determined not only by your taste, but by your budget. When you know what you want the style of the wedding to be and what you can afford to spend to make it so, you will realize how many guests you can invite. That number should then be divided evenly between the bride's family and the bridegroom's.

Not exactly fighting words, Miss Ultimate Wedding had supposed. Wedding size is not a decision based on etiquette, she told herself to assuage her conscience about her wandering attention. A proper wedding can consist of only the principals, or can include an entire nation lining the streets, simultaneously cheering and memorizing the design of the wedding dress for cheaper reproduction.

Certainly no one should be financially strained for the sake of a wedding. Contrary to unpleasant belief, etiquette has never tried to dictate who should spend what on a wedding. The only stake that etiquette has in the wedding size is making sure that people who legitimately expect to be invited—there are a lot of illegitimate expectations floating around society these days, which their possessors are not shy of mentioning—are not hurt.
Alert readers will have noticed the lapse of logic that so long escaped Miss Ultimate Wedding. Suppose the size you decide upon, either because you prefer it or because that is all you can afford, or both, is smaller than the number of people who will be hurt if not invited?

Of course Miss Ultimate Wedding said you couldn't hurt them, not that you had to invite them. To avoid doing both, you must limit the list by categories unrelated to individual likes or dislikes. "There are so many close friends we would love to have, but we're having just a private ceremony with members of the immediate family," is a polite explanation that ought to satisfy any reasonable friend. So is "We're not having any children," or "We've had to define 'family' only as far as first cousins, not second cousins."

What of the common variation of this—"We'd love to invite everybody, but we can only afford to have x people?" It has belatedly occurred to Miss Ultimate Wedding that there is something inherently rude in allowing style and cost to prevail over emotional bonds. When something has to be cut, it should be the menu and frills, not the guests. Let us say, for example, that you have a large family or a huge circle of friends who truly care about you and with whom you would like to share your wedding, but feeding them all dinner is prohibitive. The solution is to feed them all wedding cake and punch, rather than to feed everything to only a few of them. All that is required is not to set the wedding near a mealtime.

While the idea of dividing the list between the two families—or four sets of parents, as can easily happen nowadays—is a fair one, polite people will be flexible enough to count guests by relationship, rather than number. If he has six uncles and she has none, it would be thoughtful to fit the list to his family, without the bride's demanding to throw in six extra acquaintances to make things even.
Miss Ultimate Wedding would like to hear of the families planning together by asking first, "Whom would you like to have?" and only afterward, "Well, let's see. What can we afford to feed them?" It would be an excellent introduction, Miss Ultimate Wedding believes, to the special definition of fairness and generosity essential to a successful marriage.

Inviting Children
Q. I've been told that children should not attend a formal wedding reception, but I've been to several where children were present. I have many young cousins and a niece and nephew and am unsure how to handle this situation when I get married next June.

A. There are two schools of thought about children attending weddings—one that holds that they are adorable and add to the spirit of the occasion, and the other that they are unruly and bound to be a nuisance.
Miss Ultimate Wedding holds to the former. It seems to her that weddings being the joining of two families, as well as of two individuals who happen to have a yen for each other, children are an appropriate part. Of course, she is assuming reasonably polite children, which may be rather a leap these days.
She does not therefore condemn those who take the other view. But children must then be excluded by age, the good with the bad. Pointing out who behaves like a piggy is just not good for family relations.

A-List and B-List
Q. My very close brother-in-law had a lovely wedding with a dream reception, but some feelings were hurt. My husband was his best man. My parents, I, and my two children were invited. We were told they were glad to have my two boys, that there would be lots of children there, and there were.
The wedding was at one o'clock with a reception, and then a catered dinner served at four o'clock. Those who were invited to the dinner received a special invitation. My parents' names were not on the list, so they left quietly, not to cause a big scene. My name was on the list, but my children's names were not. The other children were all seated. I felt I couldn't stay.
Now I'm the bad guy! Because I didn't make a big scene and holler, I have hurt the newlyweds' feelings.

A. There is some unfortunate and legitimate confusion in this situation, but tell your relatives that Miss Ultimate Wedding does not approve of hollering as a way of settling etiquette problems. The problem is that tradition allowed wedding guests to be separated into A and B lists— some invited to both the ceremony and the festivities afterward, and others to one of those events but not the other.
Miss Ultimate Wedding no longer permits this. All guests other than immediate family may be invited to the celebration only, after a private ceremony, or asked to attend a ceremony not followed by a celebration, but some guests cannot be told to arrive after, or go home before, other guests. Child guests—as opposed to a child of the bride or bridegroom—are an exception, but those of the same age must be treated alike.

Thus, you and your parents should have been included for all the events and your children should have, as well, if others of the same age were. Had all the children been excluded from part of the activities and a nearby play area with baby-sitter not provided, their parents should have been told in advance so that arrangements could be made for them.

Too Many Friends
Q. I imagine many women in their thirties are grappling with the same problem I am about wedding invitations. The older you are, the more friends you've accumulated over the years. In deciding whom to invite, I go back to circles of friends from graduate school and college—circles where I've kept in touch with perhaps half of each group, yet attended all of their weddings. I'm wondering where to draw the line. Do I send invitations to the people I'm still close with and only announcements to my fading friends (who will inevitably hear through the grapevine that I'm getting married)? Or invitations to everyone and just hope there's a natural attrition rate?

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding cannot claim that it is rude to invite only close friends to one's wedding and send announcements to those now more distant. That is the correct distinction to make. But she would like to persuade you to issue invitations all around, anyway.

There is a sequel to that "older you get" formula that applies to late middle age: The older you get, the more you value the friends of your youth. Your now-fading friends will, of course, remember that you attended their weddings, and will therefore feel slightly miffed not to be invited to yours. It is, indeed, likely that they would not rush to attend, but the omission of an invitation would stick in their minds and might act as a barrier when you reach the stage of wanting to renew your old ties.

Faraway Friends

Q. My husband's and my relatives and friends live so far away that it will be an expense for them to come out to our daughter's wedding, much as we would like to have them. Is it correct to include a note acknowledging that we will understand if they cannot attend? Are we to provide hotel rooms?

A. Please do not even think about sending such a note. Miss Ultimate Wedding knows you mean well, but she is virtually certain that your relatives and friends will interpret it as evidence that your invitation is insincere, and you are hoping that they won't accept so that you can invite people you'd rather have in their place.
A great many people with good intentions decide not to send wedding invitations to those whom they believe will not accept (typically because they find travel difficult, are presumed not to be able to afford it, or live far away). All they succeed in doing is making the non-invitees feel unwanted.
It is not the task of hosts to answer, as well as issue, invitations. That is up to the guests. If they must decline, they can easily do so without even having to cite reasons. Oddly enough, they believe they make their own decisions better than anyone else can do for them.
No, you don't have to provide hotel rooms for wedding guests. However, if you really want them there and are worried about their expenses, it would be a gracious way to help.

One Spouse Only
Q. A colleague of my husband handed him an unaddressed wedding invitation and said something unclear about inviting him "for professional reasons." He told her he would like to attend the wedding, at which point she made it clear that the invitation did not extend to his wife. My husband plans to attend the wedding, because he genuinely wishes her well. It is of no emotional consequence to me whether I attend and of course I won't, as per the bride's wishes.
But has the bride been rude by inviting one member of a couple but not the other? If it is a rudeness, against whom has it been committed—my husband, who was discomfited to explain the situation to me, or me, who was excluded but feel no pain thereby?

A. Against Miss Ultimate Wedding, who was neither discomfited nor interested in the wedding, but who must guard the world against crimes of etiquette.
To invite someone to one's wedding "for professional reasons" is an unspeakable idea, which was only emphasized by not inviting you both as a couple, which is the way married people are treated in social life. Whatever career advantage the bride hopes to gain by treating your husband in this insulting fashion, Miss Ultimate Wedding cannot imagine what advantage he hopes to obtain by accepting. Probably none—probably he was just kind (or sweedy naive) enough not to be outraged. If you don't have the heart to explain to him that the bride obviously did not want him to accept, Miss Ultimate Wedding doesn't either.

Colleagues
Q. Surely you do not cling to the quaint notion that all wedding guests are intimates of the bride or groom. That may have been true once, but today many invited guests have never met either of them.

Consider the situation my husband and I have encountered, not once but twice. The president of a small company has a son or daughter who is getting married, and he thinks it would be jolly if he invited the whole management team. We could hardly not accept, although I resented being forced to buy a gift for someone I did not know. We attended the weddings, even though one was a hundred miles away.
Like you, I do not condone rudeness. If I accept an invitation, I do my utmost to fulfill the obligation. However, I can understand someone in the situations I described who finds something more enjoyable to do than get dressed up to watch two strangers get married, and then stand in line with a couple hundred others for the standard hotel fare of fried chicken, ham, and overcooked vegetables. So they figure if they are on record as having accepted and sent the required gift, they can safely spend the day as they wish.

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding assures you that the hosts would rather have their guests safely on record as having declined the invitation than prepare for the comfort of those who do not show up. Not that she is in great sympathy with people who invite their business associates to a private occasion in which these people can have no genuine interest. It is almost asking them to treat it as a business meeting—one attends if one can, but not if something more important comes up. Nevertheless, a civilized person would resist that temptation. Spoiling someone's wedding reception—as would happen if the entire management team failed to arrive to take their designated places—is not the way to teach one's boss a lesson.

Volunteer Guests
Q. How can I explain to coworkers I do not socialize with that they are not invited to my wedding? Several people have mistakenly assumed they are invited, although I have never given them any indication that they would be and my guest list is above and beyond what I had hoped for. I really do not want to hurt their feelings, but I am put on the spot when they make these comments.

A. Rude as it is for people to let on that they expect to be invited to a wedding—especially people who are not in your social circle—you are right to handle them delicately. It is a rough desire to wish you well that leads them into this awkward error.

Your reply must be that you are having a very small wedding, only for your family and immediate circle of close friends. Never mind that other coworkers will be invited— you are quite right to count people only by whether you see them socially and not by what jobs they hold.

A wedding is not a professional occasion. And a small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.

Explanations
Q. My daughter and her fiance have chosen a very small place for their wedding reception. As a result, the guest list has been painfully cut and there will be hurt feelings on both sides of the family as well as among friends. Would it be impolite or presumptuous to send letters to those who will not be invited, in order to explain the circumstances? Or would it be best left unmentioned, letting them wonder why they weren't invited and not addressing the situation at all?

A. What is the letter going to say? "We had to choose between having the wedding in a charming little place without you, or in an ordinary place with you, and we decided the heck with your hurt feelings—the location was more important to us than your presence"?
Miss Ultimate Wedding is afraid that it is impossible to escape the realization that such was the reasoning that led to your decision. She would not attempt to explain this to the excluded guests, if she were you. Rather, you might throw a party for the bridal couple upon their return from their wedding trip and invite those people to what you can still call a wedding reception.

Compensatory Entertaining
Q. Due to finances and my choice of location, I have limited my upcoming wedding to 100 guests. This means that some of my future mother-in-law's friends will be excluded. She is therefore insistent on including them in the rehearsal dinner at her home the night before, to which she has invited my bridesmaids only verbally through me, and ignored the clergy entirely. She also will not permit me to send wedding announcements to any of her friends.

These are only four examples of her endless lack of cooperation with my plans. I feel that rules of etiquette exist to protect all parties in any such situation, and prevent present anger and future discord. Am I justified in seeing these as breaches which put my parents and me in a very awkward situation?

Q. There is an unpleasant thought that is preventing Miss Ultimate Wedding from entering sympathetically into the denunciation of your mother-in-law, which you kindly pair with a declaration of belief in etiquette.

It is that your case for courtesy seems to be built on the idea that you may blithely omit this lady's friends from wedding plans that you identify as yours, rather than both families'. It seems to Miss Ultimate Wedding that the awkwardness you describe stems from the mother of the bridegroom trying to recover from this slight.
The number of guests invited to a wedding is properly determined by the number of people whom each family wants to have present. Miss Ultimate Wedding is not saying that an exaggerated list cannot be argued down, but that those who are truly close to the family should not be dismissed with the claim of saving money.
You could limit the wedding to family and throw related parties for friends. Had there been more sympathy shown all around, it could have been suggested that your mother-in-law give a party to celebrate your marriage after the wedding trip, for example.

Miss Ultimate Wedding gathers that instead, this lady was merely assigned the night before the wedding and is trying to make the most of it. For the sake of your future family relations, she urges you to work out a compromise that will recognize the legitimacy of her wanting to include her friends, without harping too much on the awkward way she has been trying to accomplish this.

Inviting the Attendants
Q. Should a wedding invitation be sent out to members of the bridal party? Or is this redundant, since the best man, maid of honor, etc., have all been "invited" to the wedding already?

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding was entering into a legalistic debate with herself over whether the informally made, but highly personal, invitation to participate in a wedding made the formal invitation superfluous when she had the sense to step back a moment and look at the human element.

Wedding invitations are pretty souvenirs (at least the ones that aren't revoltingly cute) as well as reminders of the time and place of the wedding. Miss Ultimate Wedding cannot see any advantage in grudging the members of the wedding party either. Not even saving the cost of die stamps.

Strangers

UNKNOWN RELATIVES

Q. Is it proper to send a wedding invitation to first cousins whom I've never met? I would like to get to know them and want them to come to my wedding, if at all possible. Should a personal note be included with the invitation, explaining how we are related?

A. You are going to have to explain more than that, Miss Ultimate Wedding is afraid. You are going to have to explain why you never thought of getting to know them before and how you plan to do so, while presumably tending to other matters, on your wedding day.

THE BULLETIN-BOARD INVITATION
Q. At the small community church we attend each Sunday, with seventy to eighty people, a trend we find offensive has recently been started. One invitation is sent, addressed to the church congregation, and is read aloud from the pulpit to those in attendance, and then posted at the back of the church. No one who attends our church is sent a personal invitation. This is even being done by our pastor's children. What do you make of this, and what should our response be? We realize that invitations are expensive, but it doesn't seem like a good area to cut back on these expenses.

A. Always looking for a kindly interpretation, Miss Ultimate Wedding is assuming that these invitations are not intended to replace individual ones sent to friends. Rather, she hopes, they are there to re-enforce the traditional notion that public ceremonies are—well, public. Anyone in a congregation is therefore welcome to attend weddings or other ceremonies held in the church.

It would be not only rude, but unwise in the extreme, to use this procedure for a private social event, such as a wedding reception.

Bulletin-board invitations do not obligate unnamed people to observe the usual conventions, such as replying to invitations and sending presents. Nor should they entitle those anonymous people to attend anything but the ceremony itself, in their capacity of being members of the same congregation. Miss Ultimate Wedding would have very litde sympathy for anyone who omitted the individual invitations to related festivities. She wouldn't quite snicker at the empty—or overcrowded—receptions that are likely to result because she doesn't enjoy other people's discomfort even when it is deserved. But she would rejoice that for once, the failure of anyone to perform the duties of invited guests would be no fault of the guests.

The "And" Crowd
Q. A bride-to-be who is a sixth-grade teacher wants to invite her students, age ten to twelve years old, to her wedding. They do not drive or date. Should the envelope read "Miss (or Mr.) Student and parents?" If the parent is single and his/her date is included, how is the wording changed? Should the inner envelope be worded the same?

A. The rule is that wedding guests may only be invited by name, and never mind how often this rule is violated. Adding "and parents," along with all the other And People—And Family, And Guest, And Escort— may indicate tolerance for other people's appendages, but stops short of hospitality. Rather, it makes clear that the hosts don't much care to bother finding out who these people actually are. In each case, there is someone obvious to ask for the name, which can then be put on the invitation, so that everyone who attends gets the full guest treatment. The bride's students can tell her the names of their parents and they at least know where to go to find out the names of a single parent's current partner.
Miss Ultimate Wedding has another suggestion, however. Having brought up the subject of hospitality, she will not actually discourage the bride from swelling her guest list by multiplying the class size times three. But invitations to students only, with a card to the parents advising them when and where the children can be dropped off and picked up, would add to their sense of privilege in being invited to the wedding.

V Guest...
Q. I am from a small, midwestern town, where we invite friends to weddings, not friend 'n' escorts or escortées. Here, it is different. Persons who attend weddings are assumed to need the security of a partner in order to celebrate the event—even if that person is a complete stranger to the bride and groom.
This is repulsive to me. I do not want outsiders at my wedding. I consider it an intimate ceremony, which is not to be thrown open to casual inspection. How can I get around the trend? I don't want to offend my friends or have them think my motivation is financial. Can we get away with leaving "and guest" off invitations?

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding knew you and she would get along when she saw that " 'n,' " which not only acknowledges that letters are missing on both sides of the 'n,' but seems to hold that mutilated conjunction with pincers. So of course you also understand how outrageous it is for wedding guests to expect to be able to bring casual dates to such a momentous occasion as a wedding. However, guests should properly be invited to bring their spouses, fiancés, or whatever passes for such if one doesn't inquire too closely; those people are prospective friends, rather than absolute strangers.

The offense to guests, as well as to hosts, is in that phrase "and guest," which may be translated as, "oh, just anyone." What you should do is to ask those guests of whose personal lives you have lost track if they are attached, and if so, to whom. Then send invitations to those people by name.
What do you say if a guest asks to bring a friend? Well, you have a choice:
1. "How delightful. We'd love to meet him."
or
2. "I'm so sorry, but we're only asking people we know to our wedding; but we'd be delighted to meet him on another occasion."

"Real" Guests
Q. I went to a formal wedding as the guest of a friend—I didn't know the bride or the groom, but the groom had invited my friend to bring a guest. After the ceremony, the bride stood on a stairway and threw her bouquet out into the room. I was near the front of the group and as the bouquet came right to me, I caught it. The bridesmaids were standing behind me with their arms outraised, but I didn't know it.
My friend says I shouldn't have done that—or at least that I should have given it back, or given it to one of the bridesmaids, as the bride had intended for one of them to catch it. Did I commit a social blunder?

A. The social blunder, Miss Ultimate Wedding keeps trying to teach people who won't listen, is right there in the wedding invitation addressed to "and guest" or "and escort." Your experience is an example of how it creates the unspeakable result of having first- and second-class guests. You were chastised because you weren't considered a "real" guest—a hideously rude concept violating all traditions of hospitality.
(Warning: Tirade immediately ahead. Be back with the bouquet aspect when it's over.)

Miss Ultimate Wedding is all for inviting wedding guests to come as couples—indeed, there is a new rudeness of inviting only half of a married couple, which she is trying to stamp out. Those who are married, engaged, or otherwise firmly attached should be asked to social events (as opposed to office gatherings, which are still office gatherings, no matter how many drinks are served) in tandem. Strictiy optionally, but if the hosts are feeling generous, or lonely, they can ask their guests if there is someone they would like to bring, find out that person's name, and issue another invitation. But no one should be expected to surrender control of the guest list to the guests themselves, allowing them to bring strangers. Having done that, however, they are obliged to treat all their guests equally graciously.
Bridesmaids are considered to be entitied to the choice positions for catching the bridal bouquet, but the custom allows all unmarried female guests to participate.

Not Unless He's Related
Q. I know columnists receive gag letters, but believe me, this is not one! The parents of one of our daughter's bridesmaids have a monkey which they are training to help care for a paraplegic. They take the animal with them when they go out. They have threatened not to attend the wedding because we did not include the monkey on their invitation.

I do not feel that a monkey belongs at as solemn an occasion as a wedding. It chatters continually and bangs around its cage. Also, there will be children in attendance, and I fear they will be bitten. I think what they are doing is admirable, but is it unreasonable to ask them to leave the monkey in the care of others on this special day? My daughter does not want it, either, but is reluctant to press the point because she wants to continue to be friends with the daughter and will have to see the parents on occasion. How can we graciously let them know our concerns?

A. Well, let's see. Miss Ultimate Wedding has been riffling through the files she keeps right behind her august forehead, and has not succeeded in finding anything under Monkeys, Undesirable as Guests. But let's do a bit of cross-file checking here. How about the rule saying that wedding guests may not bring along their own, uninvited guests? That should take care of it. No?

All right, here's one under Animals, Working. It says that trained assistance animals, such as Seeing Eye dogs, may go anywhere their owners do. But this monkey is not yet trained and, not being in attendance on one of the guests, would be there in a social and not a working capacity.

You are quite right to suspect that monkeys who are solely out for a good time do not make ideal guests, although Miss Ultimate Weddings wouldn't count on the children's not having a better time than they suspected possible. To inform the guests of your decision, you might adapt the general rule formed for excluding children—"We are so sorry that we can't have your darling monkey, who would undoubtedly behave beautifully, but we feel we just can't make an exception because other people might want to bring theirs, who might not behave as well."