# I Screwed Up...Help Me Fix It! (Wedding Invites) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 24, 2009, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399 "2009-12-24T00:43:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/41 "2009-12-27T02:35:16Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > \ > > Anyway, I’m waiting for the actual invitation to arrive. A Save the Date is sort of a “heads up, please keep this date free, more formal paperwork to come soon” sort of thing.\ Exactly - it’s just a notification that X and Y are getting married on this date, and if you want to attend, don’t schedule any surgery for that morning. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/42 "2009-12-27T02:54:52Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I just thought of one other thing. These days, a lot of people have friends and relatives that live far away. So, even with a local wedding, significant travel would be involved for some of them. I don’t think I’d feel insulted getting a wedding invitation from my family in Florida, for instance, even if I couldn’t attend. Bingo. If we get married here in NY both of our families will have to travel since neither of us grew up here and the wedding will cost $20,000. If we have it in Las Vegas everyone will still have to travel but the wedding will cost us $4,500. We can have the same wedding in either place but in Vegas we won’t have to go into debt to get married. The cost to our guests will be the same either way (actually probably less because it is cheap as fuck to stay in Vegas, unlike NYC where it will cost you $150-$200 a day to rent a hotel room.) This way we can have an awesome wedding for 90 without going over our budget instead of having a mediocre wedding in NY for 25 for the same cost. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/43 "2009-12-27T03:04:43Z")
[Not a serious response] Can you arrange to have the people you invited go to the chapel and have all the rest meet them on the pirateship in front of Treasure Island untilafter the ceremony? When it sinks, they’ll drown like rats. Problem solved. [/Not a serious response] Best of luck, no matter how it goes. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/44 "2009-12-27T03:50:30Z")
> [@](#): > > I am trying to come up with some wording for our website indicating that children are not allowed to let people know that kids need to be left at home I would _not_ rely on on a posting to a website for communication to wedding guests. You need (as seems to have become clear) to be quite explcit about who is invited. I have never heard of a “Save the Date” as opposed to an explicit wedding invitation. Either you are going to invite them, or you are not. Your wedding is on such-and-such a date. You hope they can attend and share your joy etc. If not, we will be sorry and miss you and hope to arrange a time where we can meet after the wedding and show you the pictures and so on. But you are correct, an invitation is an invitation to the person to whom it is addressed, not an opportunity for the invitee to bring people who weren’t invited. There is a reason for all these outmoded, nitpicky traditions that interfere so much in people’s spontaneous joy at a wedding, and it is mostly to avoid stuff like this. Or so says my mother, and I have seen the inner workings of enough weddings to agree with her. Regards, Shodan PS - Best wishes for your future happiness. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/45 "2009-12-27T05:14:22Z")
Dude, save the date cards are perfectly traditional. As somebody else said, they’re to tell you in advance not to schedule any surgery. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/46 "2009-12-27T08:23:04Z")
I’m guessing I’m not taking the photos. Don’t worry. But your real screw up is that Vegas is very family oriented these days. Of course people will bring their kids. Good luck on straightening out the mess. It will work out. Don’t worry. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/47 "2009-12-27T08:45:25Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Dude, save the date cards are perfectly traditional. As somebody else said, they’re to tell you in advance not to schedule any surgery. I’m not saying they aren’t, but I’ve never gotten one, and I’ve been invited and attended quite a few weddings. The closest thing I can think of to them is the informal “Hey, you wanna come to my wedding?” chat you sometimes get or the slightly more formal announcement in the newspaper (or now even on Facebook). Both of these come before the fancy-shmancy formal invitations. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/48 "2009-12-27T14:46:51Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I’m not saying they aren’t, but I’ve never gotten one, and I’ve been invited and attended quite a few weddings. Most of the “Save the Date” cards I’ve gotten are from people who have family scattered around the country and planet. I’ve never gotten one for a local wedding. In any event, the OP didn’t send out “Save the Date” cards, which would have been addressed to the invitees only and helped alleviate the current confusion. Rather it was sent out as an eVite and presumably sent to email addresses. Hence there was no way to differentiate between invitees and non-invitees who shared the same email address. That is where the screw-up occurred and why some people assumed that their whole family was invited. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/49 "2009-12-27T15:41:45Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I’m not saying they aren’t, but I’ve never gotten one, and I’ve been invited and attended quite a few weddings. > > The closest thing I can think of to them is the informal “Hey, you wanna come to my wedding?” chat you sometimes get or the slightly more formal announcement in the newspaper (or now even on Facebook). Both of these come before the fancy-shmancy formal invitations. They are very common when invitees are far flung, which is typical these days. I receive them often; I have been to 5 weddings including my own, in the past 4 years, and received a save-the-date for all, except my own. They are usually a little postcard sent with 4-6 months lead time, and they do not say anything about the nature of the reception. Usually its something like: Save the Date Jane and Bob are getting married April 25 in Burlington, VT. We must travel in different circles though, because none of these weddings had “formal announcements in the paper.” ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/50 "2009-12-27T17:11:50Z")
Really? Your people don’t do engagement announcements? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/51 "2009-12-28T03:31:29Z")
Any responses, **pbbth**? ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/52 "2009-12-28T03:43:53Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Any responses, **pbbth**? Not as of yet. So far people haven’t responded to our update but I expect tomorrow we will start hearing back from people. ---
**Author:** ![nashiitashii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7c8e57/32.png) [@nashiitashii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nashiitashii)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/53 "2009-12-28T14:43:26Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I just thought of one other thing. These days, a lot of people have friends and relatives that live far away. So, even with a local wedding, significant travel would be involved for some of them. I don’t think I’d feel insulted getting a wedding invitation from my family in Florida, for instance, even if I couldn’t attend. When **Acid Lamp** and I got married, it was a “destination wedding” only because, no matter where we had it, the vast majority of our guests would have to travel a significant distance to get there. Why? Neither of us grew up in our parents’ hometowns and the family members had traveled further across the world in the past 30 years. The concept of the “hometown wedding” is a foreign one to me, as nobody stayed in the same place for more than one generation. > [@Zebra](#): > > But your real screw up is that Vegas is very family oriented these days. Of course people will bring their kids. Really? I still mentally have Vegas as a place where kids may be brought along, but it’s still an adult atmosphere. > [@Zsofia](#): > > Really? Your people don’t do engagement announcements? We didn’t do engagement or wedding announcements, partially due to the scattered nature of our families and partially due to a three year engagement. It seemed silly to do an engagement announcement right after our engagement when nothing was planned, and even sillier to do one a year out when we’d been engaged for so long. We also didn’t do an engagement party, bridal shower, and **Acid Lamp** didn’t do a bachelor party. I did, however, go out and get drunk and go dancing with my local girlfriends for my bachelorette party. Oh, and I didn’t have the “giant photo of the bride” shrine at the wedding either-- I hadn’t ever heard of this as a wedding element until my brother got married to a Southern girl-- it’s a cute idea, but we did things so casually that it would’ve looked out of place. As for the save-the-date eVites, there are always going to be people offended, put out, or crossing what you thought was a fairly clear line when it comes to these wedding things. I had vendors try to push me into what they thought I wanted or needed several times, especially our sixth location event coordinator at the hotel-- because I was so easygoing and laid back about the event, she had to try and stir up some crazy in there somewhere, and she finally got a calm, trimmed-down version of it the night before the wedding when she tried to take over the ceremony rehearsal and add stuff into our ceremony that we didn’t want. My only advice is to be calm and rational, but still get your point across that you requested what you wanted and that, as long as it’s a reasonable accommodation, your requests should be respected based on the fact that you’re paying them to do what _you_ want. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/54 "2009-12-28T15:53:25Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Really? Your people don’t do engagement announcements? Um… no, “my people” don’t. I only have about 10 living family members (including second and third cousins – my family had a little run-in with the Nazis that didn’t turn out so well for them). My “hometown newspaper” is the New York Times, pardon me for saying so but I always thought their wedding announcements were posh and pretentious. Perhaps because the people announcing are generally extremely upper crust, perhaps because I don’t believe there is any chance that any of the 900,000 readers of the NYT that don’t already know me care about my wedding at an aquarium. I think there is a very large divide between wedding customs in urban areas and wedding customs in small towns and rural areas. My wedding is simply not a social event of note in New York City, why would I act like it is? I will note, that all of the weddings I am mentioning, not all were Jewish weddings (2 were, 3 weren’t) and I am certain all of the marrieds would have thought a newspaper announcement of their wedding somewhere between anachronistic and outright pretentious. ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/55 "2009-12-28T16:50:18Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > But you are correct, an invitation is an invitation to the person to whom it is addressed, not an opportunity for the invitee to bring people who weren’t invited. > > There is a reason for all these outmoded, nitpicky traditions that interfere so much in people’s spontaneous joy at a wedding, and it is mostly to avoid stuff like this. This is my take on it exactly. If your name is on it, you’re invited. If it’s not, assume those who are not named are not included. If you refuse to go alone and really want to go, it’s gauche, but you should ask if you can bring someone before assuming they can just come. There’s usually a reason not everyone’s name or “and family” isn’t included on an invitation - perhaps the couple is strapped for cash. That said, are you in an inter-cultural relationship? If so, that might be part of the problem. When my husband and I got married, we very clearly outlined how many people his dad could invite. However, that’s not how you do things in India, so he took the extra invitations we’d sent him, had them copied and mailed out an additional 350 to more or less every single person he’d ever met and then some. We had people calling us we’d never heard of; his dad hadn’t spoken to some of them in years. Much of my husband’s family simply wrote in the names of their children on the invitations, along with extra menu selections. Considering that many of those who chose to come with their kids were from a different continent, we sucked it up. But, our expectation had been 70 wedding guests. We got 120. The whole thing was a circus. We really wished we had eloped. ---
**Author:** ![Visual\_Purple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5daacb/32.png) [@Visual\_Purple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Visual_Purple)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/56 "2009-12-29T19:03:20Z")
People will travel with kids and SOs, even if they are not invited–I mean, kids can’t be left at home and SOs it may not seem appropriate. Thus, if you want your guests to have a pleasant experience, you might try to arrange kids’ and companions’ activities. You certainly can have a no kids reception (less fun, but your choice) and you certainly have the right to invite adults without companions, but, even if space prohibits having everyone at the ceremony, you might consider a larger reception. This avoids the business of some people being allowed companions and others not. (People will notice that, and, even if they try to be understanding about it, it will hurt some feelings.) I’d very much go for expanding the reception, even if you have to cut back on something to afford it. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/57 "2009-12-29T22:13:17Z")
> [@Visual\_Purple](#): > > \ You certainly can have a no kids reception (less fun, but your choice)\ Less fun, _in your opinion._ Not every enjoys being around children. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/58 "2009-12-30T00:41:50Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > Less fun, _in your opinion._ Not every enjoys being around children. That and perhaps you can only afford so many people. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399/59 "2009-12-31T21:58:58Z")
If the OP wants to include children, many hotels will work with the couple to offer a “children’s menu” with such things as chicken fingers and french fries vs. the much more expensive entree. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-screwed-up-help-me-fix-it-wedding-invites/522399.md?page=2)