For those invites where it is a +1 (no name specified), does it just say “John Doe and Guest”? I could also see how this could become awkward for invited guests if they feel compelled to show up with a +1 and are currently dating anyone.
Our family is on the small side, so we’d probably err more toward inviting people in relationships with family members, regardless of whether they’re co-habiting, dating, or engaged. In my experience, wedding photographers are sensitive to composing groups for photos. The ones we’ve had at family weddings will ask for categories of family first, then have significant others join the various groupings, and also take couple-only photos when appropriate. The “who is that woman in the wedding photo” dilemma made for a funny episode of HIMYM, as I recall.
Unrelated but nonetheless helpful - when you do mail out the invitations, be sure to put a number on the back of each response card and keep your own list of names and corresponding numbers. An amazing number of people forget to put their names on the response card, so you find that 2 won’t attend and 1 will without having any idea of who exactly these people are.
Taylor Swift crashed a Kennedy wedding when she was dating a Kennedy. The Kennedy cousin called and asked if it was okay, was told no, don’t bring her, then did it anyway. I have to say I think the MOB handled it poorly and caused a scene (it was Frank Gifford’s daughter, so of course Kathie Lee saw it all and shared with the world). Rude on everyone’s part and really, once the crasher shows up just forget about it and go on with the party.
Each couple should have the wedding they want. If they want informal/include everyone, go for it. White tie and room for exactly 50? That’s another way to go. If they want no children, make it clear. If you are worried about the college buddies just showing up, call and tell them that either is or isn’t allowed, 2VU0609 (or spread the word thru the friends’ social media of choice). When my cousin got married, they made it clear children were not included. But they did make it clear so that those of us traveling would know, and those who lived close would not show up with a brood. My uncle called and asked me if I wasn’t coming because of the ‘no kids’ rule and I told him no, I wasn’t attending anyway and the no children rule had nothing to do with it. No one was mad about the no children rule. When I was very young my parents often took me to the church to see the wedding, but never to the reception.
I think the age of OP’s daughter is a factor, and it’s a HS boyfriend and she’s now in college. Who knows if they’ll still be dating in a month or six months? It may also be a factor that there is one other cousin and by pairing those two singles the MOB has an even ‘cousins’ table.
+1s got invited by name at our wedding. I think the only one I didn’t know well was the girlfriend of one of my colleagues at work, but they’d been together a long time and did in fact get married shortly afterwards. My younger son was invited to bring his girlfriend of then 2 years to two family weddings. One was his first cousins wedding, the other was the brother of my sister-in-law. The reception was a huge cabaret like affair. Naked people! Playing with fire! Slam poetry readings! We were all dying to go just to see what it was like.
I’m not a big fan of plus ones in general - but I grew up in the Foreign Service - making conversation with strangers at dinner parties was part of the deal. If you know John’s girlfriend Sue and like her - invite her - if you don’t, why should she be there?
In our case DD is the first of her group to be married at 24. No engaged or married friends but lots of boyfriend/ girlfriends that are getting a plus one. A factor that we also took under consideration is that we will have a band and lots of dancing, so we would want her friends to have fun with their significant others.
For son and his fiancee: couples married, engaged, or living together were invited as a twosome. For other single guest friends, son and fiancee went by whether or not they had a relationship with the guest’s boyfriend or girlfriend, if such existed.
When it came to family, the guidelines were more flexible.
My niece (22) and my nephew (20), neither of whom has a significant other that I know of, are invited without plus ones, and will be seated with their parents (which is what they prefer).
When S1 and DIL got married, they planned and paid for the wedding themselves. S1 said they used the Beyonce rule - put a ring on it. Only engaged and married people had a +1. He explained to us that they just didn’t want to open a can of worms figuring out how significant people’s relationships were or offending single people who didn’t get a +1. This didn’t sit well with my sisters-in-law, each of whom had a son in a relationship.
On the other side, three years ago S1’s then girlfriend (now wife) was not invited to a cousin’s wedding. We were all fine with that since we understood decisions need to be made about the number of guests.
We were disappointed 2 years ago when S1’s then fiancee wasn’t invited to a different cousin’s wedding. We didn’t ask the cousin if she could come, nor did we just bring her to the wedding uninvited. We just accepted that she wasn’t invited. The cousin’s mother apologized for the oversight, but then made the excuse that they didn’t get engaged until after invitations went out. They became engaged 6 months before invitations went out, and the bride’s mother knew that. What really got me was that after the reception I was talking to a young woman and asked whether she knew the bride or the groom. Her answer: Neither, she was the videographer’s +1 (not assistant).
People make their own decisiions and set their own criteria regarding who’s invited and who isn’t. That’s their prerogative.
My daughter has 11 plus ones on her list. When I asked her about them, she said 9 were boyfriends - she just didn’t put their names down on the preliminary list. The other two are for two friends who won’t know anyone else at the wedding.
When D got married, we included a plus one for every non married person on the list. Thankfully most of those peopel did not bring someone.
Your D should simply attend her cousin’s wedding and decide that she will have a good time. For various reasons I attended several weddings without a date (or without H after we were married) and I had a good time.
I would not expect a 19 yo to get a +1. I wouldn’t call and ask about the after party either. They already said no, stop pushing it. It’s one night, a family event, she’ll survive without the boyfriend.
My nephew is getting married, I’d never expected that my kids would get plus ones at 19 and 22.
We had a very small wedding–about 50 people–and all of our invited friends were given a plus 1. (We both had fairly small families, and didn’t invite any cousins: immediate family only.) We wanted them to have a good time at the reception. Having been to all too many weddings with insufficient men to dance with, I didn’t want to inflict that on my friends. Some of them let us know they were bringing someone, and some said they were coming alone.
People with big families face a major challenge. I think people need to chill. That said, bringing an uninvited guest to a formal or fairly formal wedding is a huge faux pas. Absolutely no way.
Bringing an uninvited guest to any wedding is wrong.
Bringing an uninvited guest is just awkward–for the guest, host/hostess and everyone who is inconvenienced. Not showing when you responded you’d come is very rude too. We have attended events where there were A LOT of no shows @$70-100+ per seat, that’s a lot of wasted money AND food.
If you are in a relationship and get an invitation for yourself without a +one, you need to decide–come alone or polite regrets. Anything else is very rude.
I could see an exception made if Cousin Dottie didn’t know that you recently got engaged to Biff. (Why I chose Dottie and Biff, I have no idea.)
I have 2 nieces and 1 nephew getting married this year. All are having the policy that if they don’t know your BF or GF, then no +1.
Weddings are just too darn expensive these days to invite people they don’t know.
My brother (FOB of one of the nieces) called me last week for my opinion about a guest list situation. For 10+ years, brother and his wife have belonged to a church group of 20 couples…each month, one couple hosts a dinner in their home for all 20 couples. It’s a big deal, and each couple goes to a lot of trouble either cooking or having catered.
Well, bro was asking if they had to invite all 20 couples to his DD’s wedding (the wedding will be about 200-250 people. He was complaining about the extra cost from having all 40 there. I told him he had to suck it up or expect bad feelings from the uninvited each month for at least a year or more.
I am sure it is very stressful for families planning the weddings to calculate headcount. You have guests who plan on coming that don’t show up and then you have unexpected guests that you never invited. This has got to be expensive.
I think it is horrible to accept an invite and not show up. (unless there is some family emergency) Not only has money been wasted but the host could have probably invited someone else who they hadn’t because they had to cut down their list.
If daughter was invited without a +1 I wouldn’t ask to include her boyfriend. I think it puts the host in an awkward position. It is just a matter of a few hours and I think it is important to respect the hosts wishes since it is their event.
I would never consider attending a wedding where I wasn’t invited. and I would find it inconsiderate for a guest to bring someone if a +1 was not included in an invitation.
This is one of the reasons that we did an outdoor buffet style wedding and reception. We could bend a few guests either way without it costing anything. Honestly I have no idea whether or not uninvited people were at my wedding or if people didn’t show up.
Of course I’d never bring anyone uninvited and I give plenty of time if I have to cancel, but when my friends ask for wedding advice (as I was the first to go through the process) I tell them to do what we did. Way less of a headache for everyone involved.
It makes me sad when people get all huffy about weddings. I’ve not been invited to weddings for people that I thought I would be and invited to others that surprised me. I always just assume the couple had the best intentions but had to do what was best for them and their circumstances. shrug
Oh we also had to selectively apply the no kids rule. Mr R’s cousins have a 6+ kids per family. We had a blanket rule of no kids for his side. My side has very few and mostly they were nursing babies still. They were allowed. Was his family angry about it? Maybe. Never heard about it if they were. Was it unfair? Probably but we couldn’t say “only 3 kids allowed per family.”
I wouldn’t invite anyone’s college age SO to a wedding.
My nephew is getting married next week. D1 got a +1 for her BF of 6 yrs (soon to be engaged). Other cousins’ GF/BF didn’t get a +1, even the sister’s BF of 1 year didn’t get an invite. My brother wanted to bring his GF of 6 months to the wedding, but was told no.
I don’t think there is a fast rule here. It is whatever the host wants to do and who they want to invite.
In this particular family it was not considered tacky to bring an uninvited guest. The wedding in question is OP’s niece so the same family member referred to in this part of the original post:
It was not a big deal to them, they pulled up a chair and it was a non-issue. Other posters relayed they were quite upset when uninvited guests showed up, so it differs from person to person.
Personally, I would not bring an uninvited guest to a wedding but when 3 showed up to my wedding it was no big deal to me either. They found seats and joined in the celebration. Not something worth thinking about on my wedding day.