No Guest For You!

A friend of mine just received an invitation addressed exclusively to her. No “and Guest”. For those of you unfamiliar, the inner envelope of your wedding invitation should clearly list who is invited; those not listed are not invited. Does the invite say Mr. and Mrs. Jones? Then the lovely children of the Jones’ are not invited. Children are only included when the phrase “family” is included.

Now normally I am a huge proponent of simply following instructions. If you were meant to bring a guest with you, your invitation would say so. Then I remembered when a friend of mine got married and a number of friends received invites with no mention of guests. The wedding was in a small venue, and I knew there was a large list of potential invites. I thought it was very likely that those without steady significant others had been invited as solo guests, in order to allow for more people to be invited while keeping the total manageable.

It didn’t seem consistent, though, who was invited with guest and who wasn’t, so I clarified with that friend what her actual intentions were. Turns out it was a mistake, everyone was supposed to have a guest. She felt terrible, but no feelings were hurt and her wedding was amazing.

It would have been fine if it hadn’t been a mistake, of course. I understand that weddings are expensive affairs, and that in order to invite more of your friends while keeping costs reasonable you might invite your perpetually single friend without guest. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, when it’s your wedding you can do whatever you like.

You should, however, give folks a heads up if you are going to deviate from what is generally considered proper behavior. Just like you specify when you don’t want gifts at a birthday party, if you’re restricting your guest list for whatever reason take the time to provide some background to the affected guests in order to (a) ensure no one’s feelings are hurt and (b) ensure you don’t end up with RSVPs for all your baby cousins.

The generally accepted threshold for extending the “and guest” is 18. My friend in this story is 30. Obviously the bride and groom want her to share in the celebration of their marriage, of them finding their life partners, but inviting her without a guest just underlines that she’s so single that she doesn’t warrant one. Isn’t asking her to participate in the bouquet toss humiliating enough?