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Once upon a time, it was common
knowledge that a formal invitation was intended only for the people named on the
invitation. If "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" were invited, only Mr. and Mrs.
Smith attended, having made other arrangements for their children, their
children's friends, their college roommate who happened to be coming to town,
and their larger and friendlier pets.
For the sake of your own sanity, and to save you from the urge to bite these
guests as they pass you in the receiving line, make a habit of assuming that
their parents never taught them manners, rather than that they're being
deliberately rude. This assumption will help you remain calm and gracious as you
pick up the phone, call the groom's family, and ask them to explain matters to
the troublesome guests. Only resort to making the calls yourself if the guests
are from "your side" or the groom's family refuses to cooperate.
Nothing could be more awkward than having to call complete strangers to explain
that their son's girlfriend is not invited to the wedding.
Your guests are, unfortunately, not unusual. Weddings are often the only truly
formal event that people ever attend, and they don't know what set of manners to
dust off for the occasion. Add clashing views on who is "close enough"
to make the guest list, and you have a recipe for starting a marriage with
tension between the bride's and groom's families. So how do wedding hosts avoid
finding themselves in your awkward position?
First, start with the guest list, not the site or the budget. Most couples'
wedding fantasies start with what the event looks like, not who is there. But
it's the guest list that causes the most tension, and it's being surrounded by
people you love that makes for a successful wedding. Most couples also don't
have a clear idea of how many friends they have. My husband's estimate of our
total guest list turned out to be about the size of just his immediate family.
Before you can choose the right size site or figure out an affordable cost per
head, you need to know how many people you'll have to feed to avoid family feuds
and hurt feelings.
Second, involve non-hosting families early. Often, couples who are managing
their own weddings plunge ahead with the assumption that "it's our
day" -- or the bride's parents start planning a wedding in their social
style, only to realize that the groom's guests don't fit well with their plans.
On the one hand, the hosts have the final say in the style of the wedding. On
the other hand, it's helpful to know the expectations of everyone who has a
major emotional stake in the event. Sometimes these expectations are
unreasonable and ought to be ignored -- but it's much easier to sort the
unreasonable from the merely inconvenient before firm decisions have been made.
Third, make guest limits simple. The old way was that the each family got half
the list, and they figured out for themselves how to stay within their limits.
Today, it's more realistic to allot a portion of the list for the bride's and
groom's friends, too - but there's much to be said for giving the families a
number and making no comments about which guests they choose to meet it.
Fourth, remember that formal is not the same as meaningful. The convention that
"everyone" has a formal wedding with a guest list of 250, followed by
dinner and dancing, is at most a generation old. The more traditional wedding is
smaller, more informal, or both. A more informal gathering makes it affordable
to feed the multitudes (since hotdogs cost less than filet mignon), and a
smaller gathering makes it easier to avoid inviting second cousins that the
groom wouldn't recognize on the street but that his mother insists would be
heart-broken if they were excluded. Early in the planning, it's worth keeping
open the options of "we'll invite everyone and just have a picnic" or
"we'll only invite our closest friends and go to a good restaurant" as
alternatives to "we have to have a dinner at the country club, so we'll
have to choose among the second cousins to get the right number."
None of these cautions mean that you can't, or shouldn't, have a formal wedding
and expect guests to answer invitations properly! However, if you know before
the first check is written that the groom has 36 first cousins, all of whom
attend every family wedding, and that the bride will be heart-broken if she
can't invite her entire sorority, you're in a better position to find a win-win
solution that leaves everyone fed, starry-eyed, and happy without leaving the
hosts bankrupt and frazzled. It's the "but we have to" statements that
come after the site is reserved that cause the trouble! |
