So our wedding is in two months. It was planned as a very small wedding. No more than 70 guests, with most of those being family. As our deadline for RSVPing has just passed, we sit with only about 40 confirmed guests. 10 of those are actually in the wedding. It turns out most of our families are not making the trip out (they are largely on the east coast or the mid-west).
We’d like to invite more of our local friends and friendly acquaintances. Is there a proper way to go about doing second round invitations? Should we talk to the people first and explain? Or just send them invitations with a new RSVP date(one that would have to be about 3 to 4 weeks from now?)
Any advice?
I’m no ettiquette maven, but in my mind, if you can get the invitations out in the next couple of weeks, just go ahead and invite the people you’d like to have come, and don’t worry about talking to them first. Don’t tell them they only got invited because others chose not to come, but they probably will guess it and most probably won’t mind.
The closer to the actual wedding day you send the invitations, the worse this idea may be.
Also, um, inviting “friendly acquantainces” may seem like a gift grab, for what it’s worth.
I think your new number is much closer to a “very small wedding” than 70 would have been.
If you have a full 2 months I would send new invites with a new RSVP date. I think it would be worth the effort for people to not think they’re ‘second round’. Just get a kit or something from Target if you need, no one will compare it with the original invitations.
My understanding was that invitations ought to be received six to eight weeks before the wedding, although this may be limited to my own community. You’ve got two weeks left on that threshold, so I don’t think anybody would realize that they were in a second round as long as you have new invites with a new deadline on them.
You know for every person who says that, there’s another who says anything under 100 guests is small.
Have you already paid for the food? Otherwise, why the need to put more butts in seats? Nothing wrong with sending the invites if you have enough time, but I guess I’m wondering why you need to bother. As someone else said, is it a gift grab?
Why not just have a smaller wedding with the people that already made the first cut, the people you’re closest to. You’ve already determined that your local friends and “friendly acquaintences” weren’t worth inviting the first time around, so why do you really need them there now?
A couple of months ago I went to a bigger wedding where there were tons of people who barely knew the bride or groom. We had to sit at a table with some of them and it was off-putting when we asked how they knew the couple to be told that they were friends of a family member and didn’t really know the people getting married.
What GilaB said. This is about the time I typically get wedding invitations, so sending them out now wouldn’t scream “I’m only inviting you because the people I really wanted couldn’t make it,” a situation that is, obviously, to be avoided at all costs.
Get some new RSVP cards printed up (you presumably didn’t have the RSVP date on the invitation itself) and get those bad boys in the mail.
Absolutely. In fact, I’m going to go with does seem like instead of may seem like.
We have a room minimum. We are paying for 60 people to eat food and drink, regardless of how many show up.
The people we are thinking of inviting are people who would have been invited if we could afford a 100 person wedding from the get go or if we had known all the aunts and uncles and cousins who had to be invited for familial obligations were not going to come.
I do rather enjoy the judgey judges and their helpful remarks. :rolleyes:
Thanks SD!
Why post in this forum if you don’t honestly want feedback? If you only want feedback that makes you happy, please say so in the OP so we all know. You’re asking about what is proper. Do you really want to appear as if you’re going for a gift grab?
You’re paying for 60 people (info we didn’t have before that is really handy to have) and you’ve got 40 confirmed. You say the RSVP time has just passed. For all you know you could get another 10 confirming this week. Add to that the notion (and it does happen frequently) that there will be people who show up without RSVPing and people who will bring guests that weren’t even on the invitation and you may end up with the 60 you’re paying for anyway.
Do you really want to invite more friends and friendly acquaintances knowing that you might end up with quite a few above what you’re paying for?
When people say “a very small wedding” (not just small, very small) and then say they will invite mostly family then one usually pictures an intimate affair. Now you’re talking about inviting friendly acquaintances to fill a quota and you think it’s judgey judgey for someone to say it seems like a possible gift grab?
oookay! Good luck with your event
I hope you have your fiancee properly trained to not criticize or question anything you say, even when you specifically ask for feedback from him. That’s the only way I see this working out well for him in the long run.
I hate that this attitude has become so prevalent. There were several people who were more friends-of-friends I would have liked to invite to my wedding, but I felt I should not because they too would think it was a gift grab. How can you measure how close you have to be to someone before you’re allowed to invite them to a big party?
Invite who you want, as soon as possible, Push You Down. I hope you have a great wedding.
That’s a good point.
One thing I’d like to say is that it’s best if you somehow split the invitations into two groups, such that none of the people in the first group know anyone in the second group, and the two rounds of invitations came from the two different groups. That way there’s no chance that someone will say to a friend or relative, “Hey, didn’t you get an invitation a month ago? I just got mine now. I must be on the second list.”
We actually did that for our wedding. On the first list were all our relatives and close friends; on the second list were the co-workers we wanted to invite.
I had the same thing. I had a list of “must invite for family reasons” that was huge-- and mostly out of town. Then I had a list of people I wanted to invite but couldn’t (most I wanted more than most of the “musts”). Only about 1/2 of them actually said yes, but they’re all very polite, so I had a full compliments of no’s by the RSVP date. I sent out more invites. We still had some extra spots after that, so I also did a verbal “hey, come eat some free food, no gift required” like 2 weeks before the wedding at my office. One of my coworkers said she’d love to come but couldn’t because her in-laws were in town. I said bring 'em along if you want. (They’re all indian, and she said they wouldn’t find being invited to a random wedding of some coworker of their daughter in law just because they were in town particularly strange). It ended up being an awesome party.
Calling a wedding a “gift grab” is a way of insulting the host. And if you make an insult, you should be expected to be insulted back.
Thing is, you weren’t necessarily being insulting, as you didn’t leave it as just an implication. You seemed more confused, and you didn’t actually come up with the insulting response. But your response here indicates that you are not above insulting them. And if your original comment was an inslult, all you indicate here is that you were suitably insulted by the response , and thus it had its desired effect.
As for the OP: heck yeah, you can still put out further invitations. The only thing to avoid is to seem like it was last minute, and you’ve still got time for that. Heck, I always thought that was the purpose of early RSVP times.
Then again, half the weddings I know about advertise in the paper or on Facebook.
On the other hand, wouldn’t you like to hear that people are going to perceive it as a gift grab from ‘strangers’ you aren’t inviting than to have that statement start circulating among your friends.
I would let people know that there is a second round of invitation, but I wouldn’t be the one to tell them. I’d tell two or three close friends…“we so much wanted to invite our friends but had all these family obligations - weddings can be such a hassle of keeping your relatives happy - but most of our relatives aren’t traveling and now we have room for the people we will have fun with.” Walk the line between bitching about family obligations (you don’t want to sound too whiny) and excitement about getting to invite the people you want. Let it get around.
Do send out real invitations and all the hoopla, these are your first choice guests even if you didn’t get to invite them first.
I’ve gotten a number of those invitations over the years, where I’m a second string guest. Weddings are usually not limitless in the number of people you can invite and everyone who has ever had one knows the pressure to invite Great Aunt Harriet, even though she PROBABLY won’t make it.
How is it a gift grab to invite someone to your wedding? Weddings are expensive - if you were just after gifts you’d be better off skipping the wedding and just buying your own stuff.
I’ve been a second round invitee at a wedding (and it was obvious - invitation was past the RSVP date and about 3 weeks before the wedding date). Didn’t think anything of it, really. And it was a fun wedding too, we really enjoyed ourselves. I wouldn’t stress about it.
There’s no real polite way to send out a “B list” invitation. What you SHOULD have done is to invite 80 or 90 people in the first round with the expectation that 60 would come.
Now you have to decide whether to buck etiquette because you’ve already paid for bodies or simply cut it down to a wedding of 40.
If you do decide to send out a second round, then first I’d call every single person who hasn’t responded and ask them for an answer TODAY before mailing out new invitations. You may be surprised how many people won’t ever RSVP but plan to show up (“Well, you KNOW I wouldn’t miss your wedding!”), or who pop the RSVP into the mail two days before the wedding because they haven’t processed the whole concept of an RSVP. But that’s for another thread.
Call people and ask them why they they haven’t RSVPed their invitation. Feign surprise when they say they hadn’t received invitations. Apologize profusely and say you’ll send their invitation out immediately.
Repeat 20 times.