<p>As an upcoming MOB (June 2014), I have read the various wedding planning/clothing threads with great interest. I have a whole bunch of dresses bookmarked thanks to you all. I am hoping your wisdom can help us on the matter of the ancillary events like engagement party and bridal showers.</p>
<p>Back when we got married 25 yrs ago, there was the traditional division of who does what. In our family, DH’s parents hosted a country club engagement party, to which they invited a large bunch of their friends who because of numbers/cost were just not going to make the wedding guest list. They came in droves, brought us great presents, and didn’t seem to mind that they weren’t also invited to the wedding. My mom’s best friends hosted an amazing shower for me, bought us great gifts and bestowed lots of love, but I am pretty sure that we were not able to invite all of them to the wedding. </p>
<p>Fast forward to 2013. This wedding is being funded with the combined contributions of us, the groom’s parents, and the couple. No “I am paying for X” … just pooled funds. So, no traditional “you are responsible for X, and we are responsible for Y” stuff. Which means no one who is “supposed” to host an engagement party (or the rehearsal dinner which is a question for another day). The first draft guest list topped out at around 200, but the goal is to end up at around 125 guests. Which means there is a pool of people we would all like to celebrate with, but who we just can’t have at the wedding.</p>
<p>At same time, our niece is also planning her July 2014 wedding with VERY traditional division of labor and finances. Her groom’s parents are hosting a big engagement shin dig in a few weeks. And my daughter asked wistfully “do we get to have one?” I also anticipate that sometime this year I will be involved in hosting a shower for our niece, and that my SIL will want to help host a shower for our daughter. But who gets invited??</p>
<p>So here’s my real question, I guess, as we embark on this year of festivities. My sense is that “nowadays,” invitations to engagement parties if any and showers are limited to people who will also be invited to the wedding (which means that wedding guests end up getting hit up for multiple gifts), versus including a larger group in the ancillary parties even tho not all can be invited to the wedding. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings on the one hand, and don’t want to overburden people on the other. How does this all work where you live? (We are Northeast and Jewish, if that influences your response since it is clear from the other threads that there are geographical and religious/cultural differences in this whole wedding planning thing.)</p>
<p>I am NYC and Italian and in my 50s and have always felt it an insult to be invited to either a wedding shower or engagement party and not the actual wedding. The tradition would be that the wedding list is larger than the shower list (old fashioned women only) is larger than the engagement celebration list.</p>
<p>I’m Northeast, not Jewish, and fairly untraditional (so take this with a grain of salt, :)).</p>
<p>I’ve never been invited to an engagement party. They seem to be rarer these days. But I did assume when they’re held, they’re close family and friends.</p>
<p>I would assume anyone invited to them or a shower would also be invited to the wedding. It does mean multiple gifts, but I think someone invited to the shower who was not invited to the wedding would be miffed at missing the Big Event.</p>
<p>I don’t think the converse works, though. Being invited to the wedding does not automatically mean being invited to the shower or engagement–that’s for closer family and friends.</p>
<p>(this does add up to less presents, but honestly, the converse can be overkill these days, I think.)</p>
<p>Just to clarify where we are coming from: I think we too would assume that if we were invited to a pre-event that we would also be invited to the wedding, and would not assume that just cos we are invited to a wedding that we would be invited to other events. And we are absolutely not all about the gifts. It’s more about the celebrating. But that means, for example, that if we have a shower, we can’t invite my large-ish group of female friends because since our families are big and the kids of course want to invite a bunch of their friends to their wedding, we only have room on the final guest list to maybe invite just a few couples and therefore won’t be able to invite my group of female friends.</p>
<p>I am a deep southern wasp in my late 50s. I was quite surprised to learn, after a quick google, that according to Martha and Emily the bride’s family traditionally hosts the engagement party. In my family of origin, the bride’s family has some strictly family events to be sure the groom has met everyone and then a friend of the family hosts the engagement party. At these engagement parties there are never gifts. Gifts are for showers and you are never going to invite someone to a shower you don’t invite to the wedding. Probably you won’t invite anyone to the engagement party you aren’t inviting to the wedding. If the wedding is really small, the bride’s parents send announcements after the wedding. Also the bride or groom’s parents might have a reception after the wedding. If guests want, they can bring gifts. It isn’t an expectation.</p>
<p>However… I now live in a different southern wasp community and recently gave a shower for a neighbor’s daughter. It was a huge shower for a very small wedding. I was surprised when they gave me the guest list to learn the custom here is to include in showers all those guests you can’t invite to the wedding when the wedding guest list is going to have to be limited for some reason. I never heard a word from anyone (and I hear an unbelievable amount of gossip) that this was in anyway outside the norm.</p>
<p>I’m Southern traditional and totally agree with garland and kiddie. I would not invite someone to any of the preliminary festivities if they were not also invited to the wedding.</p>
<p>I think the answer might be to have a small unofficial celebration with your female friends who want to honor your daughter but will not be wedding invitees - maybe one of the friends could act as “host.” This would be equivalent to office co-workers who are not invited to your wedding throwing you a pre-wedding shower. Nobody would be offended and everybody would get to celebrate the occasion.</p>
<p>^ Agree with **garland **and with the above.
My experience has been that an invite to a bridal shower presumes there will also be an invite to the wedding. The only exception is a work-based shower.
My D did not have an engagement party OR a shower (wanted to go low key). But when she and her fiance were in our town over last Thanksgiving weekend we invited local friends to stop by and visit and meet her fiance. It was casual and spread out over the weekend.
IMO you can always do a low key party/luncheon for people to meet bride and groom after the wedding, just a get together and preferably without gifts. The important thing is to allow those who care an opportunity to meet the new family member without imposing on them, especially if they are not being invited to the wedding.
Or you could simply do a barbeque or have a party at some point at which the couple will happen to be present, and can be introduced around!
(I am Northeast and not Jewish.)</p>
<p>Much happiness to you and the young couple!</p>
<p>Exceptions are work-based or club-based or school based. It depends on who is throwing the shower. We’ve had showers for members of our club and work buddies with no expectations of a wedding invite–it’s just a fun way to celebrate someone’s joy.</p>
<p>I agree with kiddie’s post #2. In my family experience, only close family was invited to the engagement party which traditionally was held by the bride’s family. Then a shower invited a broader group, but again only those also invited to the wedding. (As pointed out above, however, work parties are exempt.)</p>
<p>Then the wedding, which includes the broadest number of invitees. In my experience, not everyone invited to the wedding got invited to the reception, but this seems to be going by the wayside. </p>
<p>I want to rant just a little, though, but just in general, not at the OP. The idea of excluding people from the wedding because you can’t afford the expense of having them at the reception seems totally backwards. It puts people behind money in order of priority. Tradition would dictate that you select who you want to celebrate a major life event with, then choose the reception venue, food, and entertainment based on the number of people you’ll have. If having the second cousins your son/daughter always loved is too expensive for the menu you wanted, then rid of the shrimp but not the cousins!! Ok, rant over.</p>
<p>MSM–my D’s wedding was on the small side (90ish invited, 70ish attending.) Groom’s family is bigger than ours, and D has lots of friends. Upside was we were not able to invite any of our friends. Just no room.</p>
<p>Perhaps one of your friends, if they all understand the situation, will opt to have a gathering of the group of them as a sort of club-like shower (like mentioned above.) Or maybe you could have them over for a small dinner party to “meet the couple”, or even a BBQ or some such, not formal or formally-designated event.</p>
<p>Hayden–I agree in principle with your “rant”. In our case, anyone left off were people who would have been fun for H and I to invite, but not people who knew D. Anyone she and her H wanted to be there were there.</p>
<p>To Hayden’s point about limiting menu rather than limiting people, I generally agree with that concept (altho having shrimp at this traditional Jewish wedding with a kosher groom and groom’s rabbi-dad is definitely not the problem!). In our case, the issue is more trying to find the right balance to address the kids’ emotional comfort zone (they are pretty young and anxious about being the focus of attention of lots of people all at one time) with their desire to include more than just immediate family in their celebration. </p>
<p>Alh - thank you for the idea of googling these questions. Why didn’t I think of that? Thank goodness we are now all done with college admissions because that frees up a whole bunch of time for wedding reading/planning! Sure is different than that one time, when the deadline for DD #1’s early action college apps and DD #2’s Bat Mitzvah all fell in the same 5 day period. Now THAT was a fun time.</p>
<p>Non-religious mid-40’s professional from the western states. </p>
<p>I have never attended an “engagement party.” Other than a bottle of wine, I can’t imagine that if I had I would have brought a gift. </p>
<p>I have hosted and, had hosted for me, showers. The showers do not include “everyone” but do sometimes include people who might not otherwise be on the invitee list (primarily coworkers and college/grad school friends even if it was a long time ago). Gifts are given. </p>
<p>As for an imaginary mom’s friends, I would think that daughter has a relationship with those long term friends that mom is closest to and they would be invited. Not all of mom’s big social circle, but the closest two or three. And if numbers are tight I’d hope they’d consider leaving their spouses (who may not care anyway) at home because they understand the burden of being a MOB.</p>
<p>engagement parties - went to only one that made sense, parents of bride invited folks (mostly family, a few family friend/neighbors) over for an evening, upon arrival guests found out that groom had taken bride out to dinner and was proposing, excited couple came back to share news with a crowd which included both families. It was a celebration and announcement of the engagement! </p>
<p>I agree with posters above that the wedding has the largest invitation list; shower guests, unless an at work event, comes from the wedding invitee list.</p>
<p>I personally do not like showers, for a variety of reasons; didn’t want one for myself, thought I had escaped, but was duped less than 2 weeks before the wedding.</p>
<p>Los Angeles based MOG. Our rules here: Engagement party: (Bride’s mother insisted that it be held in her home.) She is paying half and we are paying half. No presents. And if you’re not invited to the wedding, you’re not invited here. This is generally a present grab…Just bring yourself. And due to the very small venue we are inviting a limited number of people. This is a young persons’ event.</p>
<p>Showers; Two…possibly three…Both sides are represented. And, we’ll call this Orthodox because the families are separated. Gifts yes…some people are giving a combination gift, meaning shower and wedding gift. </p>
<p>Wedding: GENERALLY bride’s family pays for everything except for the flowers, band and liquor. For some families this is split down the middle. In this wedding, we are paying for everything except for the invitations and the photographer.</p>
<p>Rehearsal dinner: We are paying 100%…generally done by the groom’s family.</p>
<p>Day after brunch: Generally bride’s family or a split. We are paying 100%.</p>
<p>We are Los ANgeles based and Jewish, save for Mr. Ellebud.</p>
<p>I’m from New England, of northern European background, mix of Catholic and Protestant, not religious.</p>
<p>I have never been invited to an engagement party. The only people I’ve known to have them were Italian girls from NY/NJ with whom I worked, back in the 80s. The engagement tended to last for two years at least, so that the engagement party preceded the wedding by at least a year. They were at least as big and elaborate as the actual weddings of most people I knew. Gifts were definitely on the agenda! These young women also had several showers–with gifts–and weddings with large cash gifts.</p>
<p>I can only recall going to one wedding shower. It was given by a friend of the bride and included only close friends, including a long-time family friend of the older generation. Very modest in size: maybe 15 people, max. </p>
<p>I happen to have a number of nieces. (My sib has become a wedding expert! ) Showers or parties have been given for them by family friends, but not engagement parties.</p>
<p>A friend and I gave a post-wedding party in honor of a bridal couple to which we invited many of their local friends who could not be invited to the wedding. (We all lived and worked in the NYC area and the wedding was in another state. Her parents were more interested in inviting their own friends than the friends of the couple.) I was a bridesmaid in that wedding. Gifts were not involved in our party.</p>
<p>If I were you, I would keep the gift-extraction events–or events that would be perceived that way–to a minimum, but I am on record as having a perhaps unusually low tolerance for them. If you would like to introduce the bridal couple to more of your female friends than you would invite to the wedding, then host a luncheon or tea. This can also be done in cases where the groom’s family lives at a distance from the bride’s, and there are old local friends whom one wishes to include but not invite to the wedding because of the perceived burden of travel/gift expectation.</p>
<p>Consolation’s last sentence is consistent with my experience.</p>
<p>I got married in my hometown which was 300 miles away from where H and his family lived. My husband’s aunt / uncle threw us a luncheon at a nice downtown hotel upon our engagement, and invited friends and relatives who wanted to see who H-who-they-remembered-as-a-little-boy was marrying, but who wouldn’t be coming to our wedding because it was out of town, it would be unreasonable to expect them to come, and it would feel gift-soliciting to invite them. I don’t recall getting any gifts other than a gift the aunt / uncle gave us.</p>
<p>Similarly, my sister got married not in our hometown, but in her groom’s hometown, also 300 miles away from our hometown. My parents threw a party in their hometown so their friends could meet my BIL-to-be, but most of those people weren’t going to schlep out of the town for the wedding. I do believe people gave gifts at that one, but it was also a different crowd, a more gift-giving crowd.</p>
These young women also had several showers–with gifts–and weddings with large cash gifts.</p>
) Showers or parties have been given for them by family friends, but not engagement parties.</p>