Damn wedding weenie!

The BBQ Pit
241

NO! Why should it matter to me if the parents have to get a babysitter for their children so they can attend my wedding? People get babysitters ALL THE TIME for ALL KINDS of various events. Why should my wedding be some kind of exception that a parent shouldn’t have to hire a sitter for if they want to attend? And NO, I would not like to meet all my friends’ children at my wedding. I won’t have time to meet them. Hell, I’ll be lucky if I have time to even say “hello” to all of my guests. A wedding is not a “meet and greet.”

No, I probably wouldn’t do that, because that would not only be rude, it would be uncustomary. However, it is decidedly not uncustomary or rude to exclude small children from formal events. So there is no parallel there.

And my apologies for offending you with the barn comment, Jonathan. It was not intended to be directed at you, personally, even though it came out appearing that way.

However, in spite of the fact that you (or other friends you know of) have mistakenly brought your child to weddings in the past without negative feedback from the bride and groom, doesn’t mean that you’ve set a new precedent of acceptable behavior. It just means that every time you (or your friends) have done so, you’ve been mistaken. You probably weren’t called on it because your hosts were too polite to embarrass you.

And again, this isn’t about rules of invitation, this is about common sense. If it’s not listed, it’s not included.

You wouldn’t expect to go to the grocery store, be handed the receipt which lists all the items you bought, yet pay for ones that aren’t on there, would you?

If I phone you and say, “Hey, Mangetout, would you and Jane like to come for dinner,” would you assume you could bring your kids?

And this isn’t just about children. It’s about any unwanted guest.

If you were single and I invited you to my wedding and the invitation was addressed only to you, would you expect to bring a date? So now what should we do, create separate inviations for [ul][li]married people without children[/li][li]married people with children whose children are included[/li][li]married people with children whose children are not included[/li][li]single people without children and without boyfriend[/li][li]single people without children but with boyfriend, but the boyfriend is not included[/li][li]single people without children but with boyfriend, but the boyfriend is included[/li][li]single people with children whose children are included[/li][li]single people with children whose children are not included[/li][li]single people with children and a boyfriend, whose boyfriend is included but whose children are not[/li][li]single people with children and a boyfriend, whose childen are included but whose boyfriend is not[/ul] And then make sure to not only invite all the people we want to come, but specifiy which people who are an extended part of their lives are unwelcome, too?[/li]
I submit that that is absolutely absurd.

It is INFINITELY simpler to actually name the people you wish to invite. I just don’t get why this is so hard.

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[/QUOTE]
Everyone decides who to invite to a wedding differently. As to why a person would invite the children of some friends but not others- lots of reasons. Maybe the bride or groom is a godparent to one friend’s child, maybe a sibling of the child is in the wedding party, maybe it’s the child of the bride’s best friend from high school, and the bride feels like the child’s aunt. Trying to invite every couple’s children might work if the bride and grom have no sibling and no cousins. For me to invite my friends’ children would have been impossible- if I invited my friends’ children, I would also have had to invite my relatives’ children. Which would have expanded the guest list so much that I wouldn’t have been able to invite any friends ( and therefore would not have had to worry about their children).

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That’s apples and oranges - inviting a spouse is totally different than inviting a child. Most children are used to not being taken on formal social engagements with their parents - those same engagements are the same ones most people don’t want to attend without a spouse or SO. And as far as inviting a child one doesn’t know to their wedding, your own wedding is NOT a time to meet someone brand new. The last thing I want to do at my own is to meet a bunch of people or children I don’t know. This is the day I want to share with my closest family and friends - not with Melissa from work’s six year old daughter. The children invited will have their names on their own invitations (I’m sending the six kids invited separate invitations from their parents addressed to each set of siblings, just to make them feel special) , and those not invited will not receive an invitation. It’s as easy as that.

And is it REALLY that much of a stress on parents to find a sitter? I seem to recall my parents never having a problem (and we had no family around to call on). My brother and I happily enjoyed staying home from social events like weddings for the most part - we were bored out of our skulls at several more formal ones. So in order to spare a parent the hassle of finding a sitter, there’s extra stress put on the bride and groom. Nice.

See above - inviting one child and not another is perfectly fine, especially if your relationship with one child is much different than your relationship with another.

It was hard enough deciding what to put on our invitations this past weekend with ONE set, much less with three. If it were up to me, we would specify how many seats are reserved for each invitation in order to avoid unwanted guests - simply because we have a restriction on the number of people allowed in our site, and we’re pretty well pushing that number as it is (we’re actually above it, but we’re assuming that some invited won’t be able to attend due to health or family issues - but I want them to have the option because I do want them to attend if at all possible). At my best friend’s wedding, one of her distant cousins took it upon include not just herself and her husband, but her friends who were coming to visit them and their three small children. The bride nearly exploded - especially since that was an addition $150 in meals for people she didn’t even know.

I guess I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to understand that if they’re not on the invitation, you just don’t assume someone is invited. If you’re close enough to the bride and groom, and feel comfortable calling and asking them if your child is invited, by all means, do so. Just be prepared to hear and accept a ‘no’ from them, and accept it gracefully. Then go find a sitter or send back a declined reply card.

Ava

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As for the meet and greet part… uhh… bull. I mean, I suppose you could avoid meeting people if you want to, and you’re not going to be able to do so during the ceremony, but the ceremony is not the entire wedding.

As for the analogy, I see a clear parallel. In both cases, there’s a person in the family unit that you wish to exclude.

Yeah, especially when you can do it with only three types of invitations… making a dozen types WOULD be absurd. Or, as Cheesesteak suggested, phone calls. That works.

Let me see if I can sway you with another patented analogy. There is a sick person in much pain. I wish to end his pain. I could try to treat him to see if he will recover, or I could shoot him, which is INFINITELY simpler.

Simpler != better.

Okay, that’s point one. Point two. You’re welcome to do things that way, but if you think you’ll never get someone who misunderstands it, you’re a crazy person. It’s not hard to understand and follow the rule if one A.) knows about it and B) accepts it. But failing either of those conditions means a person is likely to violate the rule and cause inconvenience. So it’s up to you… which is less inconvenient - clarify the rule for them in some fashion, or deal with the inevitable unwanted kids.

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Not inviting a spouse is different from not inviting a child? Says who? I refuse to accept that distinction. What if the person in question is closer to their child than their spouse?

And I wish you luck with that approach of separate invitations, but don’t be surprised if a couple shows up with their kids.

I never said finding a sitter was a big hassle, just a tiny one that the bride and groom might actually take into consideration for a split-second before making the decision to have a child-free wedding. It’s a factor. It’s relative importance to be determined by the parties involved.

So if you like little Janie but not her sister Sue, there’s nothing wrong with inviting Janie, Mom, and Dad, and leaving Sue out? Okay.

Specifying the number of seats is a good idea, if you can manage it. Apparently, according to some, it’s a major expense. I’ll have to take their word for it.

And yet, many make that assumption. Which suggests to me that it’s a natural assumption to make.

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I think most people do somewhere betweeen 1 and 2. I accepted the risk that by not specifically disinviting kids on the invitation , someone would, through either misunderstanding or willfulness bring their uninvited kids. In exactly the same way that by not specifically disinviting Samanths’s three younger siblings on the invitation, I risked those three extra kids showing up at my daughter’s birthday party. It’s one thing to accept the risk- it’s entirely another to accept the blame for the misunderstanding when a friend hears from another friend (who apparently either did understand the invitation or at least called to check) that children are not invited. I’d have gotten more than huffy if Samantha’s mother called me a couple of weeks before because she heard from Adriana’s mother that siblings were not invited, and then tried to blame the misunderstanding on me.

247

<snort!>

Ok, now we’ve crossed over into the completely insane. I’m done with this moron. You girls keep up the good fight if you want, but I don’t have the patience.

One last thing, though… Mangetout, this bloke is exactly the kind of person we’ve all been referring to with regard to the kind of people who truly think nothing of bringing whomever they damn well please to a formal, by-invitation-only event, just because they can’t see why their precious darling who’s joined with them at the hip shouldn’t get to come if he wants, or why they should have to find a babysitter since weddings are family events anyway.

Ta! Have fun, all!

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BTW, CandidGamera, why do you call it the wedding invitation rule? The rules aren’t actually any different for a wedding invitation than they are for any other sort of invitation. It’s just that you don’t often hear of people who misunderstand when they receive an invitation addressed to “Mr & Mrs Doe” for a retirement party, an adult’s birthday party, the “Thank You” dinner the pastor is throwing for the church volunteers, a company holiday party , an invitation to dine out, etc. Why do people apparently understand the rule in those situations, but not for weddings?

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In my town, there’s a roundabout. Cars in the roundabout must yield to cars on the right. That’s the rule, and it’s even posted.

But newcomers to the town don’t yield. Or, if they are in the car on the right, sometimes they yield when they shouldn’t. So, the people who live in the town end up yielding when they shouldn’t (according to the rule) in order to prevent an accident.

Because I recognize that lots of people either don’t know or don’t care how the roundabout works, I feel it’s part of my responsibility as a driver to be on the lookout for those people. Oh, I may honk at someone who cuts me off, but I’m not going to insist on following the rule if it’s going to lead to a fender bender.

Such is always the case. To quote a very wise man in a spandex suit, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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it doesn’t matter what is correct in the cold light of logic, if it doesn’t work properly. It doesn’t matter how you label people who fail to understand that named guests only are invited, as long as there are such people. The question is: what are you going to do about it?.

You can choose to do nothing, in which case there is a distinct possibility that someone, whether because he is a crass cultural ignoramus, or because he just happened to get the wrong end of the stick (which of these is the case actually makes precisely no difference on the day), will turn up with uninvited kids in tow. Then you have an uncomfortable situation to deal with.

Of course, disinviting people is uncomfortable too, I understand that. My argument in this thread is not about what should happen, but what is likely to happen and how it can best be dealt with.

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I was going to make a comment about Candid being deliberately obtuse or completely self-centered, but I can’t argue the thread with him again.

Apparently, he views the world through Candid Colored Glasses, and there’s no changing that.

Ava

252

to be fair, there’s more than one person attempting to support the position that an invitation directed to specific person(s) isn’t specific enough.

I understand that many people misunderstand. That doesn’t mean that it’s an unclear or not specific enough statement. That means that certain people will ‘read into’ specific language when it suits them. I don’t understand why it becomes my problem however.
I had an employee once - I gave him some instructions “we’ve got a quarerly review coming up. bring me every file opened between 1/1 and 3/31 this year. the “opened” date is located in this box on the first page of the file.”

his first question was “is that calendar quarters or program year quarter”.

I answered “doesn’t matter - between 1/1 and 3/31 of this year”.

He then said “there’s other pages in these files with dates on them, some of them in that time frame”.

me “Doesn’t matter - the only place you need to be concerned about is that one specific box on that first page”.

Him “but, other dates bleed into that”.

me “can you find that box?”

him “yes, but”

me “no ‘yes, but’. just look at that one box and no where else”

him “but…”.
I fired him.

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In the case of wedding invitations, It becomes your problem when guests turn up with uninvited children in tow. Arguing over whether it ought to have happened, or what they should have understood becomes, at that point, moot; the scenario that you specifically didn’t want (the presence of uninvited children) lands in your lap. What do you do?

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sigh.

yes, it’s a problem when uninvited guests show up. where I disagree that it’s my ‘problem’ (perhaps I should have used the word ‘responsability’), is assuming that my friends or the addressees are unfamiliar with their native language and will make assumptions about who is invited when the names are spelled out.

what I do, is what I did - act graciously at the time. And continue to use resources, such as this, to educate people “invitations are issued to the people listed on the invitation, one shouldn’t assume that anyone else is included if the names are specifically not there, if of course, the invitation is addressed ‘to family’ by all means, assume the kids are invited too, but not if it’s listed just to the mom and dad”. “no means no”. and all that type of thing.

I cannot grasp why you all are still arguing that it’s ‘ok’ to assume that the invitation means other than what it expressly says (especially mind boggling is the demand that the bride be ‘more clear’ in her intentions - as if somehow, listing the specific names of those invited is not clear as a fucking bell_ , or that I should anticipate this by some language like “to Mr and Mrs. but NOT to Kate or Leopold or the cat or their neighbor or their mom who’s visiting or their favorite friend or their butcher or their friendly neighborhood wino”.

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Well, since presumably you’re the bride or groom, you grit your teeth, go through with the ceremony anyway, and pray the people will either have well-behaved children, or will remove them to another room or outside where they can act like children usually act. Or you instruct your ushers to bar the entrance of families with children, such that they must leave one parent outside. By that point you’re going to have more important things on your mind than whether a 2 year old is wailing for a cookie in the back row of seats. And you’ll be just as married even if there is.

I still think the wisest thing anybody ever told me about human relationships is this:

Communicate without second-guessing.

If you don’t want children there, and you don’t want any misunderstanding, you have to SAY so. I don’t care what the book of ettiquette says, there’s a very good chance your invitees don’t even own a book of ettiquette, and wouldn’t look up ‘wedding invitations’ even if they did. There’s also a very good chance that they have been to weddings where children were welcomed, where the invitation didn’t list the kids specifically by name any more than Christmas cards list the children by name, yet are sent to the whole family.

If you don’t communicate explicitly, and somebody fails to read your mind (or your book of ettiquette) then I guess you’re likely to wind up gritting your teeth.

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I’m not arguing that it’s OK; I’m arguing that some people will misunderstand (or possibly deliberately ignore, but I think honest mistakes are more likely) the specifics of the invitation and that, regardless of how dumb and contemptible this makes them, you are then faced with dealing with the outcome.

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You say nothing to the people who brought the child (no point in making them uncomfortable), squeeze in an extra place setting ,and accept that this is the real world, and nothing ever turns out perfectly. Realize that instead of an uninvited child, you could have had cousin Louie pullng cousin Vinnie’s pants down while Uncle Joe gets into a drunken fight with cousin Pete, and make sure that the next time you want to invite them without the child, they get a " It’s adults only" or “We’d love to have Susie, but …” phone call. They won’t be insulted that you assume they don’t know the rule.

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So you’d address the invitation “Mr & Mrs. Chance but NOT KATE!!!”?? and you’d believe that would be the preferred method? Or “Mr & Mrs. Chance but no children”??? (in which case you’d still end up with the ya hoos who’d think ‘surely they dont’ mean my darling Katiepoo who’s never been anything but angelic").

again - I’m being direct in my communication. the fact that others wish to read into what I say is not my fault, and doesn’t mean that I’ve been less than direct. Why not accept that one shouldn’t ‘read into’ what some one else says?

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Mangetout, here’s the bottom line (for me, anyway); there will always and I do mean always be people who either don’t understand a rule or don’t care about the rules. Always. There isn’t a damn bloody thing that can be done about that. Really. I wish there were, but there simply isn’t. No matter how many exceptions or explanations or outright demands you place on or in a wedding invitation, trust me when I tell you there will be someone who doesn’t follow it. There are people who are told outright, NO KIDS, who schlep them along anyway. Amazing, perhaps, but true.

So as a civilized society we have to come up with a solution that is as clear as possible for the majority of people, without crossing the line into bad manners. Disinviting people in an inviation is just plain bad manners. The bride and groom who do that, thinking they’re just being helpful, are actually being quite rude. The invitee(s) showing up with more guests than were invited from their party are equally as rude.

But for as much as we’ve tried to pound home the fact that people will do whatever the hell they want with an invitation no matter how clear you think you’ve been, those people are actually only a very small minority. Most people do know better and behave as such. Although you can pretty much count on 1 person not following the rules of invitations, the other 200 guests “got it” just fine. To cater to the few who don’t get it, at the expense of the feelings of everyone else is (here’s that word again) rude.

Sadly, there will always be rude people. On both sides. All we can do here is hope to educate those who may genuinely not have known better. If you can now say that you understand the rule and would call your host for clarification before bringing guests who aren’t listed on an invitation, then we’ve done our job. A small bit of ignorance has been fought and won and that’s all that needs to happen. No other solution is necessary (IMNSHO).

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Ok, that is hilarious! Thanks for the laugh, wring. :smiley: