Plus 1's - help!

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Yes - it seems that you and I are the only ones thinking alike lol! It's not about being rude or about not respecting their relationship - it's more about ME and MY wedding and who I want there. I've heard a saying before that goes "If you don't see yourself having (and paying) dinner with a person one-on-one, then they shouldn't be on your guest list". I know it's a bit extreme, but to a certain extent, it's kinda true...

Such a bummer that your brothers girlfriend acts like that! Good luck!

My view is that if you can't respect someone else's relationship enough to invite SOs (regardless if you've met them or not), then how can you expect them to celebrate yours? Since you need to cut down your list due to the cost and size of your venue, I would simply cut all of the guests for which you don't have room to include the SOs. If I were a guest, I would be much more understanding if the couple simply had to cut me from the list, as opposed to being invited without my SO.

View Quoted Comment So that being said, if you were going out to dinner with a bunch of couples, would you purposely not include someone's significant other?

View Quoted Comment It has nothing to do with respect

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Well you asked a question and I'm just giving you my honest answer, from the perspective of a hypothetical guest.

If you were to tell me, "I'm sorry but due to budget and venue constraints we have to limit our guest list and we're not able to invite you," then I'd be understanding of your predicament and there would be no hard feelings.

But if you were to tell me, "I'm sorry but due to budget and venue constraints your SO is not invited," then I would be very offended!

Couples should not be split up when it comes to wedding invitations. I would much rather not be invited in the first place than to have my SO excluded.

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I love how you take the one person who agreed with you and went 'Yes! Obviously I'm in the right', stellar. 10/10.

You have a long time before you have to commit to your guest list, but right now, plan on not inviting fringe friends or cousins so that you can make sure to have your really close friends and their SOs at the party.

A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn't host someone for dinner you shouldn't invite them to your wedding, but it's not 'one-on-one' it's you as a couple hosting someone, and you wouldn't invite a cousin or friend over without their SO because that would be weird and rude.

We as a community are not here to hold your hand and agree with you, we're here to help you through difficult decisions and guide you through etiquette.

You don't cut SOs, unless there is some sort of dramatic back history and the SO is someone who should not come to your wedding at all under any circumstances. Even if the SO is unlikely to come, providing they haven't been abusive, disrespectful, etc you extend an invitation to them. If you want to significantly cut your guest list, I guarantee not providing invites to SOs will greatly reduce the number of your preferred guests who RSVP yes.

Figure out which guests are MOST a priority to you, include them, and their SOs. If people can have weddings with 50 guests and include SOs for all invited, you can do it with 150 spaces available.

If you are looking for a way to limit your guests, I suggest creating a spreadsheet that ranks guests based on priority of having them at your wedding - 0s being immediate family, 1s being those in the wedding party, 2s being close friends or less close but still important family, 3s being good friends, 4s being people you like but maybe not a top priority, and so on down the line. Have a column for the total number of invites associated with that guest - for example my best friend is super important to me but I have almost no relationship with her boyfriend, but she still had 2 guest spots because her and her boyfriend are a social unit. You can then sort the spreadsheet and figure out where your 150 person cutoff is (including SOs, because you've allocated space for them in total number of guest spaces per invitation). Maybe that you hit 150 guests right between your 2s and 3s, maybe its between your 4s and 5s. Wherever that number lands, that is your cutoff.

You do not need to include plus ones or dates for guests who are single or just casually dating, but for people in well-established committed relationships, including their SO is a sign that you value their experience at your wedding. Not including SOs is basically either a dig at the SO or says that your guests enjoys themselves really isn't important to you. Nobody wants to go to an event that is all about love and romance without their partner.

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I personally would be understanding and would take zero offense - that's why I'm considering not inviting them - because I would hope that my friends/family would be understanding and not take it personal against their SO

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I like the spreadsheet idea - I can think of a few cousins that I would absolutely want them to be there, and others that I don't have very much communication with. Therefore, I could invite just the cousins I really want (in the 0 - 1 category) and I can not invite the other cousins (my lower ratings) and that'll give me wiggle room to invite my 0-1's SO

Thank you for the idea!

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Yea you can do the ranking however works for you - I just basically said 0s are most important and worked my way down from there. My childhood best friend was a 0 even though she isn't related to me, but she's probably the closest thing I have to a sibling, and definitely in a different category than any other friend and more like family. When we did our spreadsheet I also classified guests as "my" guests or my husband's guests. While not necessary, I think it helped us find a good cutoff point where we felt like we have a more even number of people supporting us. Our actual list of people who attended skewed heavily in favor of my husband's friends, largely because his guests were more local than mine, but the numbers we invited were about even.

I do think inviting SOs for those in committed relationships is really important but feel like you can skip over guests/plus ones for anyone who is casually dating or single. I personally hate plus ones. Going to weddings single and solo is fine - you just interact with other people, and might even meet someone special! But if you have a SO and have to leave them at home for an event that is all about love and romance, that's a pretty lonely feeling. So I would have a more limited number of households in favor of including SOs, rather than inviting an expanded diverse group of people from all different chapters of your life but not allowing them to bring their other halves.

Oh and one other thing... I had a few friends who had long term relationships but they were kind of these on-again-off-again hot-and-cold situations with people I wasn't personally friends with (had met them all before and had no issues with them personally, just wasn't close to them at all) and otherwise would not be invited to our wedding. In those cases, I sent the STDs addressed to my friend only, but included their SO in my spreedsheet and overall calculations. When it came time for invitations, I reached out to those people and specifically asked them if they wanted me to include their SO on the invitation. I basically told them "You are 100% absolutely invited to my wedding and I really want you there, but I know your relationship with so-and-so has been a little rocky, so I wanted to ask if you wanted me to name them on the invite. I'd have no problem at all with you bringing them, and if things are going well between you two right now that is awesome. But if you feel like you'd rather come on your own for whatever reason, and its easier for you to use the excuse that they aren't invited to do so, I can leave them off. Basically I'll address the invite however you'd like me to to create the least amount of drama for you!" I let them know THEY were my priority and whether or not SO was invited was entirely dependent on what would be most enjoyable/least troublesome for them. I know that is a bit unconventional, but people in the relationship understand the dynamics better than I do, and the people who were in that situation actually really appreciated me reaching out and giving them the choice! Three of the four said things were going amicably and asked me to include their SOs, but the fourth said they actually were more or less broken up at that point and would rather be invited on their own.

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Yes, I am particularly sensitive to those kinds of criteria when deciding who gets to have their SOs invited. FH and I were in a relationship for 5 years before getting engaged, and due to the circumstances of both of our living situations that we had to wait out, we were actually engaged prior to living together. Before we were engaged, one of my friends had just gotten engaged and was saying that she was only extending invitations to SOs where they were either married/engaged or living together, because "that's how you know they're serious". I said something along the lines of "guess that means SO and I aren't serious", at which point she immediately backtracked and said "well of course you guys are different". People like to craft these hard and fast rules but ultimately, if your guests are in a committed relationship you need to invite both regardless of length of relationship or milestones.

To OP - you may not think this is about respect but it is. You are getting a negative response because what you're proposing is disrespectful to your guests. If you cannot invite the SO, you either have to cut the couple from your list or cut other people to make room. There is no way I would want to dress up, buy a gift, travel and possibly book a hotel room, and spend my Saturday watching you celebrate your relationship if you didn't invite my SO simply because we didn't meet your criteria for having a relationship worth honoring. The bottom line is that coupled guests can't be split apart just because you have a better relationship with one half. If we were friends/cousins and you didn't invite my SO, I would decline to attend and seriously reconsider my relationship with you.

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Yes, I know it's less common now to do the 'no ring, no bring' thing so I was surprised. At our age (30s) 2 years is a long time. And of course in our friendship group we have many friends who have been together decades and have no plans to get married at all, so that rule would be extremely offensive to those people if we did that - all of them have been dating 3 times as long as us.

I completely agree with the respect aspect too. I would much prefer to not be invited at all, than to be invited without my SO.

Barring some kind of egregious behaviour or proper reason as to why a person should not be invited, then significant others should get an invitation.

Since you already have the venue with set capacity, this is not something to worry about now and definitely not something to tell people yet. You will likely become closer to some people and lose touch with others by the time invitations go out next year.

Most SO’s to me would be an automatic invite. If the SO is toxic or will cause drama, I’d probably consider a no invite. But they’d have to be a complete asshat.