Like everyone else said from ~22-34 I went to 3-5 weddings per year. While there were some I didn’t know anyone it was because I was dating someone who knew someone. At my wedding I’d never met several of my parents friends that we were asked to invite and I’d never met half of the people my wife invited we had about 120 show up.
For a lot of my friend’s weddings I typically knew either the bride or the groom and didn’t know anyone else. I remember a couple of weddings where the only people I knew were in the wedding party and they were all busy doing wedding stuff so I practically knew no one at the wedding. One we were friends of the groom and he invited me and two coworkers we had never seen anyone besides the groom and so it was a lot like wedding crashers.
I won’t go if I barely know the couple, unless I know what’s on the menu.
Barely know 'em and it some lame chicken-and-pasta dish? Sorry, gotta wash my hair that night.
Barely know 'em and they’re gonna have Prime Rib? Let me go get my tie, and a decent wedding gift.
Realistically, though, 100% of the weddings I’ve been to have been for people I know reasonably well. I can’t think of any time/date I’ve been invited to a stranger’s wedding. Hell, I have some blood-kin that I’ve even turned down 'cause I just wasn’t that close to them. Never had an invite to a stranger’s wedding though. It’s not like I’ve found the “invitation tree” and plucked an envelope off a branch. . .
Tripler
A “stranger’s” wedding? I’d be the strangest one there.
Despite knowing a couple of people that were in the industry (photographers like pulykamell) my experience is mostly that. I’m from a very irreligious extended family, even the professed Christians are more cultural than anything. Big wedding are simply not a thing in my family - we’re antisocial city hall folks . With friends it is more a mixed bag, but a lot have fallen into that category as well through forced frugality if nothing else. A few to a small handful of nice, but casually dressed witnesses and a city clerk. Or in one case a non-denominational service in an NYC apartment living room (so self-limiting in terms of crowd).
So although I’ve attended several weddings, I’ve literally never been to a “large” Hollywood-style wedding. Every sizeable one I’ve ever been invited to attend, and the number isn’t all that high, was in conflict in some way in terms of travel and work.
I wouldn’t necessarily call them atypical either, though. LIke I said, in my family – and we were a blue collar immigrant one – the typical wedding was big and what I see on TV very much reflects the usual size, if not fancy event space, around here. Go to a Greek, Polish, Italian, Mexican, Filipino, Indian, etc., wedding in my city and you’re likely to find 200+ guests at all. It was just what we did – and – believe it or not – in some of these traditions, you were expecting to “make money” on the weddings (like in the Polish weddings I attended) so a large guest list helped with that. (But that’s a side point about ethnic weddings where cash is the usual gift, and not part of the Hollywood wedding depiction, typically.)
I’m from Sweden. 400 people would be considered a huge wedding here. Someone mentioned the smallest wedding they’d been to having had 85 guests, that would still be big here. Not small, at least.
Well, I’m one of “everyone else” and I didn’t say that. I’ve gone to no more than fifteen weddings in my whole life. Nearly all of them were in my twenties and thirties. Perhaps the largest was about a hundred guests, but that was very untypical. Five of my nieces and nephews are married. I didn’t go to any of their weddings. Some of them I wasn’t invited to because they were thousands of miles away and the couple had only a limited amount of space at the location they were married at, so they didn’t even bother to invite people they knew couldn’t come. Some of them I was invited to but couldn’t get to.
Some years back, a close friend invited me to her step-daughter’s wedding. I don’t know if I’d ever met the girl, but I think my friend wanted me there so she wouldn’t have to deal with her husband’s ex. It was a fairly small wedding as I recall - not even 50 guests - and I never got a thank-you for my gift. Kids these days…
No big drama - with me there, she didn’t have to socialize with the ex. We entertained each other and left the parents free to be with their daughter and new SIL.
Somebody check my mathematical reasoning:
The larger the wedding, the more people get invited.
The larger the wedding, the more likely you (i.e. any particular person) are to be invited to it.
So the percentage of weddings that you are invited to that are large weddings is greater than the percentage of all weddings that are large weddings, leading you to overestimate the number of large weddings.
Well, I know the size of my friends and family weddings, whether I am invited or not, so I can certainly have an accurate count of what is done within my family and peer group.
According to The Knot, the average American wedding now has a guest list of 130, down from 150 about ten years ago. Obviously, you have to check the methodology of that survey, but that coincides with my experience both personal and professional (and actually is a little smaller than I would have estimated.)
I’ve never been to what I’d consider a large wedding (more than 200 guests). Nearly all were small. I never went to a wedding where I didn’t know at least one of the couple, and I usually knew a bunch of the other guests. Half my family (i.e. cousins) live in another state 2k miles away, so I never attended any of their weddings. Only have four cousins nearby, and I attended their weddings, and none were large.
Most weddings I’ve gone to over my life have been coworkers’ weddings. The idea of a 1000 guest wedding sounds like my idea of hell.
The Knot is a website run by people who make their money from weddings. When they calculate the average size of weddings, they presumably ask their customers how large their weddings are. They don’t ask the people who don’t use their services. So they naturally overestimate the size of average weddings.
Furthermore, suppose you were to calculate the average size of the following weddings;
1038
573
198
54
42
34
20
15
8
7
5
3
You could say that the average is a little more than 166. You could also say that it’s 34. It depends if you take the mean (adding the numbers and dividing by the number of numbers) or the median (picking the middle number) as being the average. So is the value that the Knot gives is the mean or the median?
Yes, I know what the Knot is and that is why I mention looking into the methodology. I think median is the important value. For me and my background, the number seems reasonable. I understand in other situations that number may be high. I just don’t really know many people who have courthouse only weddings.
When friends got married, they were amused to discover that the various tradespeople in the wedding business in town all knew each other. (So the photographers knew the florists, who knew the caterers, who knew venue operators and so forth.) I suppose it’s to be expected, given they’re crossing paths throughout the year.
. With friends it is more a mixed bag, but a lot have fallen into that category as well through forced frugality if nothing else. A few to a small handful of nice, but casually dressed witnesses and a city clerk. Or in one case a non-denominational service in an NYC apartment living room (so self-limiting in terms of crowd).
