and yet another wedding question

heyalb
Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:45:08 +0000

Slight hijack, but the upshot is the same.

We used to host a haunted Halloween hayride when our kids were little; we’d book the big cart (which held 30 people), and we’d have everyone over to our house before embarking on the ride. This was a mixture of our kids’ friends and one or both of their parents, depending on specific families, but clearly we could only have 30 on the cart.

I called every family on the invite list, and explained that there was only so much room. Most understood, but a few acted as if we had given them “tickets”, and they could dole out the tickets as they saw fit. In other words, if my son’s friend couldn’t make it (but the friend’s uninvited older brother could), then the parent would say “I’ll bring Johnny instead”. As host, I had to say “I’m sorry we can’t accommodate Johnny this time around. We hope you understand.”

I’m with the camp that says you are the host, and part of your hosting responsibility is being clear who is invited to your event. No doubt, in certain cases it may take a preemptive call. If you don’t want to do that, then you just have to go with the flow. But you can’t expect people to read your mind, especially rude people!