I think this is an excellent idea.
Technically, you’re right. But if nobody on the B-list knows anybody on the A-list, they’re unlikely to find out they were on the B-list. That’s how we arranged things.
I’m not sure “B List Wedding Invitations” and “Etiquette” belong in the same sentence for me. It’s pretty tacky. But I think that anytime you run a big social function you almost always end up with at least a couple of breaches of etiquette, and this one’s not as bad as others.
I have to say that when I know that I’m in a B-List category, I only show up to the wedding if I know it’s going to be a bachannal/extravaganza of a wedding party and I know lots of other people there. Fair’s fair after all. I’m not going to hold a grudge about the B-List, but if you want to gift grab, then I’m not showing up unless you’re throwing around money and making it worth my while to go and be entertained.
If you’re going to do a second round, Alessan’s way is the way to go about it.
PS: the people who think weddings are gift grabs are often the same people who refuse to give up their seats on the bus because a woman decided she “wanted crotchspawn”. You can ignore them.
Wow, I’m really surprised at the people who are calling this a gift grab. I’m curious about which posters who are calling it that have planned a wedding before (and I’m saying this as someone who chose not to elope). Planning a wedding often means that your parents tell you you have to invite Great Aunt martha and of course Great Aunt Martha needs her son Joe to help her around and Joe has a wife who needs to be invited too, and your mom’s best friend who used to babysit for you when you were 3 wants to come and so you have to invite her…People whom you may truly want to invite can get bumped by those you are obligated to invite.
IMO, it’s more gift-grabby to invite people you don’t give a rat’s ass about, for the sake of getting swag.
Push You Down, have a lovely wedding.
Weddings aren’t gift-grabs unless they’re being hosted by gift grabby tacky people. Creating a “second round” of invitations and dividing your friends into superior and lesser is definitely lame. If you want a small wedding with only a select few people you love and trust, stick to it.
If people find out you categorised them in the latter group of “not as important,” it’s completely logical to think that your hosts either need bodies to fill the hall they pre-paid for or because they want more gifts.
Mostly I think people who divvy up their friends and create first and second round invitations are bridezillas, but to each his conception of how to treat his fellow man.
I had to help plan my sister’s Indian wedding, which is like an American wedding on steroids (and usually involves a pony) and hit every Straight Dope talking-point of “I can’t even imagine” wedding extravagance. We still didn’t plan A, B, C lists to the wedding. Just gross.
The problem with pretend the invites were sent is that her 20 local friends may know each other, and will probably end up at the same tables. So they may mention to each other how the postman lost this one envelop. Especially if they suspect what’s up, which isn’t unlikely, it’s kinda a transparent excuse. Like suranyi said, it’s much less likely they’ll ask Great Aunt Selma what her RSVP date was. And that’s if getting an invite 6 weeks before a local wedding even sets off a flag.
I’m just not seeing how inviting certain people you would have invited originally if you had the space, is a gift grab. I’m also not seeing how failure to make the “A” list is a social snub – typically, the “B-listers” are closer to the bride and groom than some people on the original list – since in 99% of cases, it is driven by the preferences of someone other than the bride & groom.
Wedding gifts are not obligatory. A “gift grab” (if such a thing can be said to exist, since the idea of making profit on your wedding is pretty laughable) is when you invite barely-known people who would have some skewed sense of obligation in gifting, such as subordinate employees.
I had a B-list of law school friends – when it turned out we had room I spoke to them individually and it really was not a huge drama. I would have liked to invite them to begin with, but there were both budgetary and space constraints to attend to, and my mother (not I) had certain ideas about who was “more important.” (her friends > my friends).
It would be nice if we could all know exactly what percent of people would RSVP and extrapolate from there to an ideal number of first-round invites, but the fact is, acceptance rates can vary from 90% to 50% depending on a host of factors.
You’re mixing your funding arguments aren’t you? If your parents are paying for it and insist on inviting X people and you have to go along with it, then yes, having as many bodies at the wedding, especially after some of those people drop out, increases the money gifts you get out of the wedding.
If you’re paying for it, there’s no reason to invite anyone you don’t want to.
Regardless, this is one of those things I think is pretty tacky. If I know a whole bunch of people have wedding invitations and Save the Dates and all several months beforehand, and then a month before I suddenly get an invite it’s a clear indication of “we might as well invite her now, at least we can get a gift out of it/use up the seat we already paid for.” At which point, you know, I’m at perfect liberty to determine whether or not this is a wedding worth attending.
On the other hand, I prefer getting the registry card with the invite and I love giving cash gifts-which is something that seems to make everyone on the Dope screech in horror. I do not like people who create friendship tiers. If you don’t think I’m close enough to you to attend, that’s fine. I’ll probably just congratulate you or send a card. But the whole “wellllll, if X doesn’t come, THEN you can come because we only have room for Y” is just junior high birthday party sleepover theatrics dressed up with a side of entitlement.
Well, my parents paid for part and we paid for part.
Modern life is confusing like that.
Except that it sounds like this situation is the result of hapless non-planning rather than bridezilla-ish overplanning… they didn’t understand, or no one told them, that an awful lot of out-of-town relatives weren’t going to make the trip for their wedding. Now they’ve got extra food and want to share the largess. I can sympathize.
For my own wedding, we did anticipate that only about 60% of invitees were likely to actually come. We made it clear that we didn’t need gifts, too.
Well, doing a Google search for “wedding invite b list” shows many sites which refer to it as a controversial but generally accepted practice, when done with some guidelines (esp. giving b list guests plenty of time to respond).
I guess I never knew it was considered to be such a horrible breach of etiquette. When I first got engaged (in 2001), I read plenty of bridal magazines which took a fairly nonchalant approach to it.