I’ve been meaning to ask this one and now here it is.
I’ve known this friend since we were 3 years old, and he got married and invited me to his wedding. I assumed I could bring my girlfriend, and he said he was ok with it dispite not having planned it originally. Then my GF asked if she could bring her then 3 years old sun to the party, and he refused. He said the kid would distract me and that he wanted me to be there without the added concern of taking care of a small child. Note that he had met the child, at a mutual friend’s wedding just some months before.
At this point my girlfriend starts a lifelong deep hatred for this friend. She also said that was I to attend to the wedding of such an inconsiderate person, she would call the relationship off. I would like to have attended to wedding alone but I choise not to, the relationship meant more to me. She is still my girlfriend to this day btw.
So what do you think? Was it incredibly rude of my friend to act this way? Was it too much of my GF to demand me not to go?
I have no mind for this kind of things and I know you guys have your morals straight, so help me make up my mind please. Thank you.
I’ll side with your friend. A wedding is not an appropriate environment for a three-year-old, and I seriously doubt he would enjoy it anyway. Further, your girlfriend sounds ridiculously controlling. Your friends are your business; she has no right to blackmail you into ending your relationship with your buddy.
I’m with friedo on this. It’s very commonplace not to include kids at weddings. How long had you been with your girlfriend at the time of the wedding? I am guessing it wasn’t that long or your friend would have known to include her. She sounds kind of nervy to me.
Did he invite you to be in his wedding? That’s the only reason I can think why he would worry about you being distracted.
Were other small children ‘allowed’ at the event? If not, your friend did nothing wrong and your girlfriend needs to get over herself. If other kids were there, then your friend is a jerk for excluding ony your GF’s kid.
IMHO, of course.
I noticed that your location is Portugal, so maybe the ettiquette is different there than in the U.S., but here’s what I see.
[ul]
[li]Your girlfriend wasn’t invited, unless the invitiation was addressed to joazito and guest. Asking to bring someone is considered rude.[/li][li]Not only was your girlfriend not invited, her child definitely was not invited. Often the happy couple do not want to deal with the distractions and exta preparation that goes along with having children at a wedding, as your friend mentioned.[/li][li]Yes, your girlfriend is asking too much asking you not to go. This isn’t the pit, so I’ll refrain from saying anything stronger than “she needs to work on her manners.”[/li][/ul]
Again, I don’t know about ettiquette in Portugal versus the U.S. Even if people are frequenly allowed to bring along originally uninvited guests and their children, your friend has made his decison and IMHO it is unfair to ask him to change the rules that he and his fiancee have chosen regarding their wedding.
I think both sides exhibited rudeness in this situation. First of all, your friend should have invited both you and your SO to his wedding, or if he didn’t know about her, you and a “guest.”
However, I think it’s the right of the wedding couple to determine whether or not children are invited. Some couples welcome children with open arms. Others don’t invite children who aren’t family. I can’t say that I blame them. I’ve been to too many weddings and seen children screaming and acting like brats during the ceremony. It was rude of your girlfriend to ask if she could bring her son.
I agree with friedo that your girlfriend sounds like a control freak. She shouldn’t have threatened you with the relationship breaking up if you went. I’d be willing to bet that if you’d said “Fine. I’m going,” she would have come crawling back. If not … her loss, I guess. The point is that if you let her threaten the relationship over something so trivial, she’s going to continue doing things like this to get her way for the whole relationship. Og help you in that case if you should get married yourselves and have children together!
He initially assumed that you were coming alone? Your invite didn’t say “Joazito & friend”?
He is afraid you would be distracted from…what? Are you acting as a groomsman or best man? Since you GF would be there, why would he assume that you would do all the babysitting?
Just weirded out. The way you phrased it sound like he wants to monopolize you for this wedding.
Your GF is a wrong for making the ultimatum. There will be bigger hurdles than this in the future. Is she going to give more ultimatums?
If you and your friend were close, he should have asked if you had a significant other and addressed your wedding invitation “Joazito and Guest.”
If your wedding invitation was addressed solely to you, and there was no place to mark whether you were bringing a guest, then it was a you-only invitation fo rone reason or another and it was too forward of you to ask to bring a guest.
Your girlfriend has less connection to the groom than you do, and does not get to decide if she can bring a guest as well. It’s presumptuous and impolite of her to insist. It’s even more presumptuous, impolite, and controlling to insist that you not go to the wedding of someone you’ve known that long. That’s the kind of power-trip that earns someone a one-way ticket to ex-ville.
Your girlfriend was very rude - your former friend was not. If he’s picking up the tab for the day, he’s allowed to decide who to invite.
It sounds like he invited you to come solo. You shouldn’t have asked if your GF was allowed to come, but being that you did, and the groom said yes, asking if her child could also come was totally over the top. The fact that the groom said no is totally appropriate, and your GF acted like a controling jerk.
Wow, I’m with the others. Your girlfriend sounds manipulative and controlling to make you chose between a life-long friend and her.
The only kids at my wedding were my own cousins and they were actually included on the invitation. I would have been annoyed to have random children showing up at my wedding. I don’t understand why people think they are entitled to bring along whomever they please when they are invited to a wedding. And considering the GF wasn’t even actually invited, it was totally presumptuous for her to expect her 3 y.o. to be allowed to attend. I’m pretty sure the little boy would not have been devastated by not going to the wedding (on the contrary “bored to death” comes to mind), so I’m not sure why the GF was so insistant on it.
Sounds to me like she was looking for a reason to break you up from this friend.
Hmmm I kind of thought so myself. Now the hard part is showing her this thread…
Oh and to clarify, I was never handed an official invite. We had a party at my parents house and he and a bunch of friends were there, and he just told me I was invited.
BTW, she was also pretty offended that I “don’t get it” why I shouldn’t have come. Recently I have been leaning towards this being rude from my friend, but I guess this thread pretty much stops that sentiment.
If my boyfriend ever gave me an ultimatum such as this,
“Do this or I’m leaving you,”
9 times out of 10 I’d tell him to go. The 10th time better be a doozy of a reason, as in I made a major mistake. Ultimatums do not belong in a healthy relationship.
And I love children but I sure am sick and tired of *certain * misbehaved children screwing up events. Certain parents bring their kids along and figure, free babysitters, while the kids run amuck screaming and disrupting everyone. I won’t have children at my wedding unless they are of close & immediate family.
However, your friend should have invited you as you & guest. I also think it’s rude to expect people to go places without their SOs just because they’re not married. If you’d been married there’s no way the invite could have been just for you. Speaking as half of a unmarried but very serious couple myself.
Regardless of whether this kid has attended other weddings, if your friend made a concession for you to bring your girlfriend, I think it was extremely rude for her to assume she should be able to bring her child, too. Sure, it might be an inconvenience for her to have found a babysitter, but it’s not her party. It was your friend’s wedding, and he can invite whoever he wants.
Further, for her to demand you not go to the wedding, then threaten to dump you if you go? This guy is your lifelong friend, for cripes’ sake! Your girlfriend was being completely unreasonable and very petty. If it were me and my husband had behaved like that while we were still dating, I very likely would have let him end the relationship. If someone is going to force you to choose between people you love, you’re better off without that person.
P.S. (and sorry for the double post) My husband and I had uninvited children at our wedding, and we were really irritated. Not only did we have to pay the caterer for additional meals, these kids were running around screaming during both ceremonies. Also, they pissed off a lot of our other guests.
At least in the US, the only guideline for inviting a guests SO is if they’re married, engaged, or living together. Otherwise, it’s at the discretion of the bride and groom who they invite. It is not required to invite a single person with a guest, if you don’t have room for them. It is rude to ask to bring one if you weren’t invited to do so.
If they’re not on the invitation, they’re not invited, period.
First, one does not ask to bring a guest to someone else’s wedding. You made a mistake asking in the first place, but it sounds like you were more confused about whether or not the invitation extended to her. Your girlfriend was out-and-out wrong, though, to request that the invitation be extended to her son. Your friend was under no obligation to invite the child, and your girlfriend made a huge etiquette faux pas.
It might have been forgiveable if she hadn’t then decided to make you choose between her and your friend, which was a remarkably childish and manipulative move.
I hope she is otherwise a wonderful person, but she was very much in the wrong.
I also wanted to say, not to be mean, but you were fairly rude, too, in listening to her. Your friend specially wants you there, tries to accomodate you with your GF, and you don’t go? I would have been dreadfully hurt.
It may not be required, but it is the polite thing to do, in my opinion. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of it, you understand. Before my husband and I were married, I was invited to a wedding and the invitation did not include him, even though the person knew we were together. I respected that, said nothing, went alone, and left early. We had to make a lot of hard decisions when coming up with the guest list for our wedding because of my husband’s large family. But we still had consideration for people like his unmarried cousin who had a girlfriend. I think it would have been rude not to invite her. But yes, it is rude to bring an uninvited guest.
