I guess I wonder if it’s a small, family wedding with a large luncheon the next day, or whether it’s a big wedding, big reception, with a luncheon the next day. The second would annoy me more than the first.
Also, unless this part of the family is usually rude, or likes to antagonize you, just take it at face value. There’s a wedding, a lot of family will be there, and they’d like to see you.
I guess I’m in the minority, but this is one of those instances where timing and distance matter. This isn’t a destination wedding, and presumably it’s not a wedding where the bride and groom invited immediate family only.
It’s one thing to have a larger reception several weeks or months after the wedding, but this luncheon is literally the day after. I do think it’s rude to invite someone to a post-wedding luncheon but not the wedding itself, especially if they are traveling in order to be there.
You know, at first, I thought this invitation was a tad gauche on the part of the cousin, in the sense that you generally shouldn’t invite people to wedding-related events (e.g. shower, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner) who are not also invited to the wedding. As mentioned, there are exceptions, such as when the couple chooses to have a small wedding, but invites a large group to the reception, or when the couple is eloping but the bride’s friends want to give her a night on the town anyway, and so on.
But the more I thought about it, and especially after reading this:
…the more I’m convinced this is a totally different scenario. My take is that the luncheon is not a wedding-related event, as such. Rather, it’s an unrelated get-together which is being arranged because many of the desired invitees will conveniently be in the area.
I can imagine something like this happening in my family, in fact. It so happens that I have a cousin with a daughter who’s getting married in the near future. This cousin and I are on good terms, but not close, and I’ve literally seen the daughter once since she was old enough to talk, for about 15 minutes over 5 years ago. So I would be utterly shocked if I were invited to the wedding. However, I assume that my cousin’s multiple out-of-town siblings (the daughter’s aunts and uncles) would be invited. And they might even invite other cousins, since most of them live in the area and are closer to the daughter. In that situation, I can totally see mother-of-the-bride saying to herself, “You know, all my brothers and sisters and their spouses will finally be back in town in what seems like forever, and since we’ve got almost all the other cousins already in the area, we should have a little reunion luncheon! And we should definitely invite the few out-of-towners - it’s a bit of a trip, but it wouldn’t be a reunion without them.”
I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be happy to be invited to such a thing.
It’s not rude if the hosts make it clear what the deal is upfront, so long distance travelers can decide accordingly.
Would it be better if long-distance family was simply not invited to anything? I don’t see how that would be less rude than the present arrangement, because it means even more exclusion. But to invite the whole clan may mean turning would might be a sweet intimate ceremony into a huge, complicating event. Why should anyone feel like they have to do this when they don’t really want to?
It’s very likely that the the bride and groom is not expecting anyone (distant cousins or otherwise) to make long journeys for either the wedding or the luncheon. If that is the case, then it makes perfect sense they would plan for a small ceremony in a small, cozy venue that is much cheaper (both to rent and decorate) than a huge convention hall. The next day luncheon sounds like an “excuse” to get family and friends together to celebrate and have fun without a bunch of formality, and again, with little expectation that folks get on a plane and travel cross country.
The OP should see the luncheon invite as stand alone party not directly related to the wedding ceremony.
Would it change your mind if the luncheon is for just the bride’s mom’s family? Because if so, I don’t see how it’s possibly part of the “wedding”.
It’s tacky to mention gifts at all.
My wife has travelled across the country a few times to attend her cousins’ receptions, even though as an ex-mormon apostate she is barred from attending the actual wedding ceremony in the LDS temple. We don’t take it personally; the happy couples’ sincerely held religious beliefs demand that the wedding be held in a venue where only the most faithful LDS can enter. Hell, none of our parents were invited to our wedding. Still, it sucks to pay airfare just to be on the “B-list”.
The luncheon is for the family in town for the wedding. But you won’t be in town for the wedding. So why are they inviting you?
I know why, as has already been mentioned. Presents. Though it is not proper to mention presents - especially from people not invited - I think they will be expecting them.
Will the bride and the groom be at this luncheon? Is it just a luncheon, or are some additional family reunion type activities planned?
One of my wife’s cousins had a very small wedding - just immediate family - and then a big and informal pig roast for a reception. That was cool. Most people in my family have quite small weddings. That’s fine also. But a wedding and then a connect but not quite connected reception is odd. People assumed that the lunch is being paid for by the mother, but that isn’t clear to me.
If it were me I’d go if there was some fun stuff to do with the kid and in the city, so that it would be worth going even without the lunch. Otherwise I wouldn’t go. And send a present if you get an announcement, and not give it at a theoretically unconnected lunch.
That’s possible. My brother got married in California three days before my son’s first birthday, so we took advantage of the fact that we had a lot of far-flung family in town to have a party for his first birthday (it was his secular birthday: we had another party at his preschool on his Hebrew birthday where we lived, and DH’s parents came to that, and then we all went out to lunch).
Anyway, coincidentally, DH’s sister lived an hour away from where my brother lived and was married. So we invited her to son’s birthday party. She was not invited to the wedding, because she didn’t know my brother. She had just moved to California from Seattle six months earlier, and had met my brother once before, at my wedding five years earlier. The only people she would have known at the wedding were DH and me, really. She hadn’t seen my mother, stepfather, or any of my family (other than me) since my wedding. It would have been awkward getting reaquainted at a place where everyone had things to do, but the small party was nice. she’s the kind of person who gets along with everyone, and people did remember her.
Besides, her making the drive twice was too much, and expecting her to give my brother a gift was also too much. But giving her nephew a gift was just fine.
The OP can clarify if I’m wrong, but he said it’s for “family in town for the wedding.” That would indicate this lunch probably wouldn’t be happening if there wasn’t a wedding the day before. The bride’s mom can call it whatever she wants, but it seems to me that the lunch is definitely a wedding-related event.
What are family reunion type activities? Seriously - I go to two family reunions every year. One is at a racetrack with a picnic area and the other is a weekend at an old fashioned Catskills resort. No planned activities specific to the reunion at all - people eat and get drunk at both and they bet at the racetrack and use the facilities at the resort just like the other guests.
How far out does that go? I mean obviously, if the bride and groom are holding the luncheon for both families, it’s a wedding related event. You think it’s definitely a wedding related event if the bride’s mother is holding it even for just her own family. What about if it’s the bride’s mother’s sister , or Dinsdale’s kid who lives in the same city as the wedding who is holding the luncheon? Is it still wedding related , or is it only wedding related if it’s the bride or groom’s parent or sibling hosting the lunch?
Try to take it out of the wedding context- I have an uncle who moved to Florida. One of his kids also lives in Florida and another in Kansas. Three of his kids and his extended family all live in NY. If the Florida and Kansas groups comes to NY for his grandson’s graduation , does that mean that any get together that weekend must be limited to those invited to the graduation , since it wouldn’t be happening if not for the graduation? I hope not, because it means I’ll probably never see that uncle or those cousins again except possibly at my mother’s funeral.
Yeah, this is out of line by the bride & groom. The “luncheon” sounds like a glorified bridal shower (honestly, people will spend the whole luncheon oohing and aahing over the marriage) and it’s pretty tacky to invite people who weren’t invited to the wedding.
Which is why I buy invitations featuring ribbons, bows, and gaily wrapped boxes.
TLDR: eh, I don’t think anybody has intent to offend. If you want to go, go, and if you don’t, don’t.
Long version:
Marriedbro’s wedding was the first one for both families and SiL is one of those women who can turn a one-line rule into a whole book. What he would have loved to have as “a few friends on top of a mountain and a meal of grilled meat, salads and sandwiches” bloated up to some 300 guests in a highly-demanded chapel and wedding-specialized restaurant. A lot of those guests were relatives or associates of the parents, with SiLDad and Mom at one point having a race to see who could get more people.
Similar situation minus the [del]arms[/del] guests race, for almost any other “first for both sides” marriages I’ve attended. The one exception was a Cuban-American bride and Armenian groom, who used “his family lives halfway across the world” to keep her mother’s guest list in check.
On the other extreme, my Idiot Aunt’s second wedding had a total of less than 50 guests (the groom was one of 10 siblings and both spouses were in their 40s, so his family alone was most of it). One of my cousins invited his parents and brothers out to lunch, his gf did the same, they sprung on them “oh we’re stopping at City Hall for some paperwork first” and then they sent notices to everybody else - our reaction was “from anybody else I’d say ´what?´, from this one whatever”.
I’m not sure what a “gamut” is, but wedding arrangements seem to run several of those…
Well, over the course of yesterday I’d gotten myself wrapped around the idea of grinning and bearing it, supporting my wife if this was something she wanted to do, and enjoying a long weekend trip. When my wife got home she said the time didn’t work well for a visit to my kid, and my wife decided she’d just as soon not go. So, one issue averted - on to the next one!
And you get credit for offering to go. I love when things work out like that, giving hand in a relationship.
At a lunch you are stuck talking to whoever you sit with. If they were going back to someone’s house - or even did the activities you mentioned - attendees would get to talk to lots of family members.
An announcement is not an invoice. A gift is never required. If it is, it stops being a gift and becomes payment. Give a gift if you want to or don’t, but a congratulatory card would be nice.
^ I agree.
But I will say that if the mere idea of bringing a gift–to a ceremony or luncheon–is enough to trigger resentment and score keeping, then staying much home is better than attending.
My gut reaction was that it’s a poorly conceived gift grab, and I’d have stayed home. Glad it all worked out.