<p>I live in the community where engagement parties and showers are as lavish as weddings elsewhere. My D is in a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage with a young man whose family is all about those things. There will be conflict when the time comes because we are a different ethnicity and we don’t do engagement parties and the showers tend to be very small tea-type things for just close family and friends. My D is adamant about wanting neither, though, and I will support her in that.</p>
<p>If you want the etiquette answer, you’re not supposed to invite anyone to a pre wedding festivity who isn’t also invited to the wedding, so you are correct there. With the exception of close or immediate family, it’s considered polite to avoid imposing more than one such event on the same group of people. </p>
<p>Showers are supposed to be at the discretion and option of friends rather than family members, and are supposed to be low key affairs. The purpose was to shower a couple who didn’t have any of the basics. </p>
<p>Engagement parties are technically supposed to be the event where the engagement itself is announced as a surprise. They are not mandatory - none of these events are.</p>
<p>I am throwing a party to introduce our families and show our new(ish) house. No gifts, just a barbecue for fun. I have to keep reminding my family not to call it an engagement party so nobody has a cow since we are hosting the party ourselves. My feeling is that if they want to call it an engagement party who gives a damn as long as its clear no gifts are expected, but the rules are just that touchy so we go along with it-- even though imo it is an engagement party, we are throwing it because we got engaged. I think it’s stupid. I wish people could relax as long as the intent is good. </p>
<p>However, we are only inviting people who are invited to the wedding. Close family only, about 20 people. Our guest list of about 100 for the wedding includes everybody important, so we should be able to avoid any invitation. faux pas.</p>
<p>I agree Emaheevul07 and want to back up to say that although I google the so-called wedding experts, I don’t necessarily believe there are any real etiquette rules anymore. This thread certainly illustrates that! Both culture and geography make a huge difference. The point of the rules, imho, was to make life easier. If the rules make life more complicated, then they make no sense whatsoever. Good manners is making people comfortable. imho</p>
<p>I do really enjoy reading the different approaches and thank MJSMOM for the thread!</p>
<p>Southern and Jewish here. At DS’s wedding, bride and groom were from different cities, so a shower was held in each city, each hosted respectively by the friends of MOB and MOG (me). No engagement parties. Only wedding guests were invited to the showers.</p>
<p>I think this thread is a nice illustration that generalities by region also have limitations. My northeast is not the OP’s northeast is not Zoosermom’s Northeast. Someone else referenced two entirely different tradition systems in different parts of the south. i’m sure everyone doesn’t do things the same in CA or Washington or Texas, though in each area, people might be doing things similarly to the people they associate with.</p>
<p>Generalizations turn out to be not so general.</p>
<p>Engagement parties: hate 'em, to me they’re just another gift grab. The concept didn’t exist when friends and I got married, and it was fine. And I’m still annoyed at H’s niece, who invited us to both the wedding and an engagement party and invited me to a shower with a guest list of the bride’s co-workers who I didn’t know from Adam (with gift registry info in all three invitations). So tacky.
Assuming OP’s side is getting half the guest list, are there really more than 60-odd people you want to “celebrate” with? More important, do you think that people in that outer circle really want to “celebrate” with you while knowing they aren’t considered close enough to make the top sixty? If there are a few friends or co-workers who you would like to introduce to the new family member, there are many other, informal, occasions where this can happen.</p>
<p>I agree with garland. I am the one with two southern POVs regarding showers. When we write “shower” in this thread I have to wonder if we are even all imagining close to the same event. Where I’m from a shower means tea/coffee/punch and very light refreshments, maybe finger sandwiches and petit fours on a white table cloth in the dining room. cut glass punch bowl & silver coffee service.</p>
<p>In my new locale, a shower is a very hearty luncheon. The norm is to use paper products/plastic cutlery. The honoree is offered all the left-overs. In my current locale many invitees couldn’t make the shower, but brought gifts by my house for the party. Where I’m from, if someone wanted to give a shower gift but couldn’t make the party, they would have delivered the gift to the bride’s home. The bride and I live on the same street, so geography definitely didn’t come into play.</p>
<p>So it is so easy to imagine situations where MOB and MOG are on completely different wave-lengths, each one thinking the other is completely out of line. :(</p>
<p>No engagement parties here. Showers, yes. Usually hosted by bridesmaids or close family friend of the parents. D1 had two showers, one hosted by the bridesmaids and the groom’s aunt which was OOS and then another here hosted by several of my close friends. If you were invited to the shower you were invited to the wedding. D2 was engaged this past May. A friend of mine has offered to host the shower here in town for her. I am hoping the groom’s family will also host a shower for his side of the family so the numbers aren’t too high for the hostesses.</p>
<p>No engagement parties here either; just not part of our social class, I guess. I have been invited to local showers of friends’ daughters who were marrying far away and I did not expect to be invited to the wedding. I was happy to attend the shower and buy a gift for the couple. I SERIOUSLY hope my D’s elope! I have NO desire to deal with this stuff.</p>
<p>Celebratory work showers are an exception. Those are thrown by co-workers and there is no expectation that everyone who attended needs to be invited.</p>
<p>Midwest rural, mostly Protestant. Not many engagement parties here, except for maybe a small backyard BBQ for the close family to mingle. S1 is engaged and DIL said her grandma was having one, but it hasn’t occurred yet.</p>
<p>My mom was always so conscious of not wanting to appear “gift grabbing”. Maybe this is why I don’t really like showers (very much the norm here). They also seem kind of unnecessary when couples live together so long before marriage.</p>
<p>OTOH, DIL said one of her friends mentioned having a “farm theme” shower for her because they wanted something different. They are in the process of buying a house/barn with 4 acres. I’m pretty excited by this idea. Hopefully they get lots of garden tools and outside stuff so they don’t steal mine :)</p>
<p>One of my coworkers had a work engagement party and a work shower, and none of us were invited to the wedding. I felt that was overkill but participated anyway. It’s not like she through them herself.
I’ve never been invited to a parent thrown engagement party. I think it would be fine if the couple were being married in another city and the parents wanted to celebrate with local friends. I think more than a few people might be fine with that invitation over the costs of going to a destination wedding. It does seem like something that should be held at home and kept pretty casual.</p>
<p>I thought that if you wanted to do something for people who aren’t invited to the wedding, the custom was to have a meet-the-couple party after the honeymoon. </p>
<p>The idea was that gifts weren’t expected after the wedding had already happened, so you weren’t putting that burden on folks who didn’t even get to see the ceremony.</p>
<p>Is this not the case anymore? I was just invited to one, and I assumed I wasn’t supposed to bring a gift, but maybe I’m wrong. Does anyone know what the custom is these days? :-)</p>
<p>My experience matches yours, kdmom.</p>
<p>KDmom–just went to a party like this a few months ago. Parents of the groom had a party at their home so their friends could meet the bride. The party was a catered buffet and invitations said no gifts. The couple had a small wedding (family and a few friends)–30 people.1</p>
<p>My D had an engagement party that we hosted–only people invited were those in the wedding party and the immediate family members of the bride and groom.</p>
<p>“And I’m still annoyed at H’s niece, who invited us to both the wedding and an engagement party and invited me to a shower with a guest list of the bride’s co-workers who I didn’t know from Adam (with gift registry info in all three invitations). So tacky.”</p>
<p>I agree that registry info in invitations is tacky, but I don’t see what the problem was that you didn’t know some of the other guests at the shower. Why would you have known your niece’s friends? When I’ve gotten invited to showers, I certainly don’t know all the people there. People have different “circles of friendship” - school, work, clubs or activities, relatives. Indeed, I would think it odd if I did know everybody.</p>
<p>"
I’ve never been invited to a parent thrown engagement party. I think it would be fine if the couple were being married in another city and the parents wanted to celebrate with local friends. I think more than a few people might be fine with that invitation over the costs of going to a destination wedding. It does seem like something that should be held at home and kept pretty casual" </p>
<p>As I said upthread, my parents did this for my sister, who was getting married in another city (groom’s hometown, and where she now lived). It was held at their home, but it was catered, I think there might have been a musician, and it was an evening event – people dressed up for it. I don’t see why it would “have” to be casual. Sometimes people want to entertain in ways nicer than a backyard BBQ. Not that there’s anything wrong with a backyard BBQ, but I don’t see why it “has to kept casual.” What’s the rationale? It clearly wasn’t a replacement for the wedding.</p>
<p>I have been to umpteen weddings and have never been invited to an engagement party. D is recently engaged and we have no plans for one. I grew up in rural midwest (mostly Catholic) now live in DC suburbs. Agree with other posters that unless a shower is at work or school, a shower invite means being invited to the wedding too.</p>
<p>FWIW, my mother told me that I was having one only one wedding shower. She did not want some of the same people being expected to buy multiple shower gifts as well as wedding gifts. I agreed.</p>
<p>MJSMOM - Northeast & Jewish here, had an Orthodox wedding for the sake of observant family members, even though neither H or I are observant.</p>
<p>As far as I know, neither engagement parties nor showers are Jewish traditions. And I think you have the perfect source for advice - the groom’s rabbi-father! Then if anyone questions what you are or are not doing, you refer them to the rabbi!</p>
<p>Now, assuming you don’t want to do that, I agree with the others that you do not invite someone to “celebrate” the engagement/marriage if they are not important enough to invite to the actual ceremony of the marriage. And yes, people will think they’re not important enough. It’s worse than being on the “B list” for invitations - it’s people who didn’t even make the B list. (In my mind, that includes people for whom coming to the wedding involves travel. It should not be up to the couple or the parents to decide that “Aunt X won’t come because it’s too far so we’ll just invite her to the local shower.” Aunt X should be invited to the wedding, and then let Aunt X decide if it’s too far!)</p>
<p>Don’t expect people to be happy to celebrate an event with you when they’re excluded from the actual event.</p>