This question was posed on our wedding forum.

“..I ask because I dated someone that I have known for a very long time and I am thinking of inviting him to my wedding. We were friends before we dated, and are still cool with each other now.”

I’m a rather salty person so no, I wouldn’t do it . If we were friends or not it wouldn’t matter, I wouldn’t want that type of energy in my space. A wedding is about building a new life, not dragging up the old one.

Besides, as another poster pointed out, how would I feel if the groom were to invite an ex? I wouldn’t like it at all.

Invite the people you are closest to…not the people you’ve been close to…if you get my drift.

That’s just my opinion, how do you feel?

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Q: People just assume that because we are friends they are automatically invited to the wedding. How do I tell them that’s not so?

A: That depends on the circumstances and how comfortable you are at telling people no. When I planned on having a very, very, small wedding (less than 10 guests) someone who I am not that close with asked me if she could come and bring a date. I was so put off by this, and I wanted to say something really snarky, but I didn’t. I said: ” I’d love to have you there but this is a small wedding and I am not sure how the space issue will work out but I’ll let you know.” That bought me some time to really think about how to say no when the time came. But if someone is really your friend, you should be able to tell them honestly what’s going on. I do it all of the time.

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I thought I was done ranting about guests inviting others to the wedding but I’m not. Frankly I am really tired of it and I don’t understand why people think it’s ok to just add two or three or four people to the RSVP list.

I was talking about this to one of my friends that had not yet RSVPed and I told him not to bring anyone to the wedding. I could have said it in a nice way but I wasn’t feeling very nice so I said “don’t roll into my wedding with a posse of your homies- ok”.

Then I felt like I may have been a little harsh so I went on to explain why. I explained how I was so annoyed that people were acting as if this was free. I mentioned how we weren’t sure we were even going to have enough space for everyone. And I explained how the guest list has ballooned out of control due to people’s lack of etiquette. He said “cool” so I thought he understood.

Imagine my surprise when the next thing he said was “so does that mean I can’t bring a date?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I’m just checking….” was his response.

I’m sure you can imagine my reaction.

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Unless your name appears on the envelope.

Simple as that.

I guess I should have prepared myself for some of my wedding guests not to be familiar with that rule but I didn’t. Our R.S.V.P. options are via phone or via our website. I thought I’d slyly stick in a remark about “invited guests can R.S.V.P. below” on the website. As for the phone; it’s just a voicemail line and it says something to the extent of “please state the names of all invited guests who will be in attendance”.

That didn’t work because people are still adding on guests….

I should show some compassion because if you’ve never planned a wedding before you probably don’t see why it’s a big deal to add on your date/lover/cousin/etc. You probably have no idea that the couple is paying per person and you probably never considered that they either don’t want to, or can’t afford to pay for someone they don’t know.

So what’s an annoyed bride to do?

The (not so) simple thing to do is to call the offenders and politely let them know that there must have been some misunderstanding because you invited X and they R.S.V.P.ed for X and Y.

Before I knew I was definitely going to have this problem I told my mom that I was going to make those calls if it happened. She said, “What if they say: ‘Yup that’s right. We are coming’ .”

I told her that I will say “Well unfortunately due to budget and space restraints we are only able to accommodate a party of X. Should I put you down as accepting or declining.?”

Of course she told me that would be rude. I don’t think it’s rude, I think it’s a little harsh and unexpected. However it’s even more rude to put the future bride and groom in the position of even having to make those calls.

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