Wedding Question

[visitorQuestion]

I’m a single guy and one of my coworkers (who is also a guy) is getting married today. He didn’t explicitly invite anyone from our workplace to his wedding. However, he has let us know when and where the wedding/reception will be taking place. Some of my co-workers are planning to attend this wedding. I’m a little reluctant to go since I wasn’t explicitly invited. As a compromise, I was thinking of going to the wedding but not the reception and sending a card.

Do you think that would be rude? Does anyone have a better idea?

Thanks!

 

[kevinsgirl]

I’d say if you didn’t get an invitation, you weren’t invited. If he talked about the wedding and where it would be, that doesn’t automatically = invitation. Now if he sent an email to everyone saying the wedding is at this place at this time and the reception is here, then I’d consider it an invitation, although an informal one. But if it was all just water cooler talk, I’d just give him a card when he gets back from the honeymoon.

 

[EasterJoy]

Scenario: Guest list is too long. Groom has to cut guest list. Still too long. Groom has to cut guest list again. Many people he would like to invite cannot be invited, which he feels bad about, but it can’t be helped. This is a man that does not want to see the people from work show up without an invitation. Be very sure that whether it was the bride’s family, the bride, or the groom, whoever decided that the guest list couldn’t include you REALLY does not want you crashing.

So your friends show up at the wedding. Now the groom has been put on the spot. They’re cared enough to come to the wedding, how can he not ask them to the reception. Only his new wife had told them they were strictly limited in how many people they could have. They put in the head count a week ago. So he has to apologize that they aren’t invited to the reception. Alternatively, he foolishly say, “Ah, c’mon over, we’ll find you some food” earning the ire of his bride and his new in-laws. That is not the scenario a man wants to have to cope with on his wedding day.

If you’re not invited and the wedding is not being held at a liturgy open to the public, don’t crash the wedding or the reception. Live with the fact that few couples have the resources to invite everyone they would like to invite, and send a card of congratulations, instead.

You and your co-workers would do better to take the new couple out to dinner some time, if you want to celebrate their marriage with them. But DO NOT crash their wedding!

If the groom asks why you weren’t there, you can answer, but otherwise don’t bring it up. If he apologizes all over the place that you were all supposed to have been invited and weren’t, you will still be outstanding among your peers as a person who was brought up correctly.

The great irony of all this, of course, is that the groom probably didn’t invite the guy he respects the most, the guy who actually cares about other people’s plans–that is, you–but couldn’t invite everyone and didn’t want the other guys at work to feel dissed. So he left all of you off of the list, only to find that the people from work how don’t have social skills showed up, anyway!

 

[PatriceA]

Is the wedding Catholic? You can certainly attend the ceremony if it is, they are not “private”. But you can not attend the reception if you didn’t get a formal invitation.

I think its very thoughtful that you want to congratulate your coworker with a card too.

 

[BrokenFortress]

I agree, if you didn’t get a formal invitation or he didn’t specifically ask you to go, you shouldn’t. I assume I’m a bit late in chiming in on this though.

Just because I’m getting married and have mentioned to my coworkers where the reception will be and things, but that doesn’t mean I’m inviting them. (although I’m not super close with them)

 

[EasterJoy]

I agree, if you didn’t get a formal invitation or he didn’t specifically ask you to go, you shouldn’t. I assume I’m a bit late in chiming in on this though.

Just because I’m getting married and have mentioned to my coworkers where the reception will be and things, but that doesn’t mean I’m inviting them. (although I’m not super close with them)

Besides, even though you wouldn’t have a party and tell someone all about it and then not invite them, you can hardly refuse to answer questions about what your plans are. It is more gracious not to volunteer a lot of information about an event to someone you’re leaving off of the guest list, but it is OK not to feel a need to invite any person who asks about your plans. (Or why you’re tearing your hair out and pounding lattes after making all of those phone calls on your lunch hour…)

 

[Magickman]

I just don’t get the concern about as insignificant an event as a wedding.

In the past, when I received wedding invitations, I simply threw them away. When my brother and sisters married, I did not attend. It was not anything that mattered to me.

Weddings are now becoming obsolete. Most people think they do not matter. If I had children, I would advise them never to marry.

 

[dixieagle]

I just don’t get the concern about as insignificant an event as a wedding.

In the past, when I received wedding invitations, I simply threw them away. When my brother and sisters married, I did not attend. It was not anything that mattered to me.

Weddings are now becoming obsolete. Most people think they do not matter. If I had children, I would advise them never to marry.

???