my coworker insisted on inviting her sister to my wedding

by Alison Green on October 8, 2024

A reader writes:

This happened a while ago, but I’m still weirded out by it. I worked in a very close-knit, small office (five people), where I got along very well with everyone except one person, “Gertrude.”

Gertrude was in her first job out of school, so it’s likely she was new to working world etiquette, but it seemed like she constantly tried to put herself as someone who was doing it all, while actually doing very little (she had the lowest output of anyone). She also had a tendency to try and stir drama — she’d say, “I don’t know why Janine (our boss) didn’t put me and you on this project. I think she’s totally unfair, right?” I’d just say that I didn’t know why anything happened and it was best to just focus on my own work and move on.

After two years of working at this office, I got engaged and wanted to invite my coworkers to my wedding. Since I thought it seemed incredibly rude to invite three of them and leave Gertrude out, I included her as well.

Traditionally, wedding invitations in my circle only include a plus-one if the person is married or in a very committed long-term relationship (as in years). The venue has limited seating, weddings are expensive, etc. … It may not be a great system, but it’s what it is.

On the RSVP cards I wrote out the guest name (e.g., Ms. Sally Jones), with a checkmark box for “yes” and “no.” For internal reference, I wrote out the number of guests on the card, so when I inputted the response I could easily write down the number of attendees.

When Gertrude mailed back her response, she wrote a note in the margins saying, “Ms. Gertrude Smith and sister Ellie Smith.” She then crossed out the number where it said “1” and wrote 2, and then in the box where one should check yes or no, she wrote in “yes for me and my sister.”

I am not an etiquette expert so maybe inviting sisters is a thing in other cultures? I told her sorry, but her sister was not invited to my wedding.

She was very insulted and we had this conversation:

Gertrude: I don’t understand.
Me: Sorry, but we are not doing plus-ones
Gertrude (huffy): Why not? I’m going to be bored without anyone to talk to.
Me: Well, you will be seated with everyone from our office, so you’ll have people to talk to.
Gertrude: Well, I want someone I’m close to to talk to.
Me: Okay. I definitely understand, so if you choose not to come, I will understand.
Gertrude: Who’s going to stop me if I bring my sister anyway?!
Me: No one will physically stop you, but it’s assigned seating … so she won’t have anywhere to sit.
Gertrude: I can’t believe you’re not letting me bring a plus-one.

I didn’t even want Gertrude at my wedding in the first place! And I had to navigate a whole mess because I didn’t want to leave her out! (She was rude to me for the rest of the year she worked there, I had to escalate to our mutual boss, and she ended up leaving soon afterwards). But was there something I could have done differently here? I know mixing the workplace and personal lives is always tricky, but I honestly don’t know what I should have done better in this situation.

I wrote back and asked the burning unanswered question: “What ended up happening? Did she go? Did she bring her sister?”

She was unclear if she would be willing to come without her sister, repeating that it’s standard to expect a plus-one. I was equally firm in that there would be nowhere for her to sit.

Whenever I tried to press Gertrude if her sister’s exclusion meant that she wouldn’t come at all, she just repeated that she could not believe I was not giving everyone a plus-one. So I kept Gertrude on the “yes” list.

Gertrude did come, and coworkers didn’t mention her trying to shoe-horn her sister into their table, so I think she got the message. But she was standoffish the remainder of the time we worked together. Her behavior was bizarre with other people too so I’m not sure if it was because of the wedding (for example, at one event where she was assigned to hand out pamphlets, she told everyone she was managing the event and got really angry when people tried to correct that). When she left a few months later, she sent me an out-of-the-blue message on social media saying, “I don’t hate anyone at work, but I needed to grow as a person and out of my comfort zone.”

All in all, a weird experience and I’m not sure what I should have done to make it less weird. Not engaged on my reasons for not including universal plus-ones? Escalated to my boss when she was rude to me before? Eloped?

People are so weird about invitations.

You don’t get to forcibly invite an additional guest to someone else’s wedding. If you’re told you don’t have a plus-one, your choices are either to accept the invitation on those terms or to decline to attend. “I’m bringing a plus-one anyway” isn’t on the table.

The point of a plus-one was never supposed to be “so that you’re not bored.” Rather, it stems from etiquette long treating married couples as a social unit, where it was considered rude to invite one member of a couple to a social event without including both (and later, as it became more common to see long-term relationships without marriage, to view those long-term couples as a social unit as well). There’s certainly a whole conversation that could be had about whether or not that’s the right paradigm to use, but it’s still a very common social convention and it’s not shocking or offensive to limit your plus-one’s that way (particularly at expensive events like weddings where space on the guest list is often at a premium and hosts are having to make trade-offs).

But all that aside, Gertrude was simply rude. “I’m going to be bored at your wedding” is rude. “Who’s going to stop me if I bring a guest anyway?” is rude. Hassling you about a decision you’d already made clear was firm is rude.

You’re looking at this as “is there anything I could have done differently?” when this was really just about Gertrude being rude, which doesn’t sound out of character for her.

That said, you were on the right track with “I understand if this means you won’t be able to attend.”  Ideally you would have taken it a step further and said, “Since I know the lack of a plus-one was a concern for you, I’ll put you down as a no. Although if you do want to attend on your own, let me know today before I finalize things.” (You could also leave off that last sentence if you wanted to.)

And if she still pushed: “Okay, I’ll put you down as a no.”

If it’s any solace, I believe all the best weddings include weird drama. (I was disappointed that mine didn’t have any! Keeping it small was likely our fatal error in that regard.) In your shoes, I would cherish this story for years to come, and I recommend that you do the same.

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  1. AnonInCanada*

    What did I just read? Wow, it’s clear the second syllable in her name (Gertrude) is definitely in play here. Be happy she’s out of your life forever. But wow, just, wow.

    2. Purple Cat*

      Haha, I definitely pronounce it Ger-Trude. and couldn’t figure out what a “trude” was. Assumed it was mean to be a play on “‘tude” before it finally clicked that it was “rude”. It might be noon, but I think I need more cofee…

      1. Namenlos*

        I read it with German pronounciation and couldn’t figure it out. It has three syllables in German: Ger-tru-de.

    3. RIP Pillowfort*

      The absolute audacity of her to say, “Who’s going to stop me?” when it’s a co-worker’s wedding invite. Ma’am you are not that important and you were getting a courtesy invite. That can be easily rescinded.

      I’d have said “Oh someone will stop you right now. You’re uninvited.” And dealt with that awkward because Gertrude was gonna make it awkward anyway.

    4. Putting the Dys in Dysfunction*

      It must be so hard to be Gertrude!

      Going through life with this massive sense of entitlement, and continually disappointed and angry when she doesn’t get what she feels she’s absolutely entitled to.

      Let’s all be happy not to have such a Dante-esque fate.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Never realizing you are your own worst enemy is indeed a terrible way to live one’s life!

    5. Artistic Impulses*

      Gertrude was unbearably rude. I have mostly been invited to weddings with my husband, but occasionally without a plus one, due to space limitations, sometimes from coworkers, and that wasn’t problem for me.

      My attitude when I went alone was to be open to the experience, talk to friends or strangers, and enjoy the food and dancing.

      My husband and I were invited to two weddings on the same weekend, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday, in our hometown where we no longer lived.

      The Saturday wedding was my cousin’s, and the Sunday wedding was my husband’s cousin’s. So although my husband had an out-of-town conflict that prevented him from going to either wedding, I happily attended both events. Since there were family members at both weddings, I had no hesitation about going to both without a plus one.

      Well, the two weddings were a complete contrast. My cousin’s wedding was a lovely event, while my husband’s cousin’s wedding was the tackiest marriage I have ever been to!

      Just some details. The weekend in question was blistering hot. My cousin’s wedding was at a beautiful air conditioned event venue. My husband’s cousin’s wedding was in the backyard of a relative, with no tents, so we were all sitting in the merciless sun, sweltering. The reception was at a nearby recreation center that was fairly old, and had one antiquated air conditioner. The only way you could get a bit of coolness was to stand directly under it, and there was a line for that.

      Because it was so hot, the buffet of food was wilted looking. I was sitting at a table with my brother-in-law, and when we went to the buffet, there was potato salad that looked especially iffy, so we looked at each other and avoided that like the plague. There were only a couple of things that looked safe to eat, so it wasn’t a very enjoyable meal.

      The champagne toast consisted of cheap, colored sparkling wine. After being initially appalled, I ended up being fascinated at just how completely awful it all was. There were so many other terrible things about this event, that I started looking at it like an anthropologist.

      It was almost like going to a “What To Do” event on day, followed by a “What Not To Do” event the next day. I got a lot of enjoyment in relating all the awfullness of his cousin’s wedding to my husband, and to this day, I think he believes I exaggerated. But I can assure you I didn’t.

      Over the years since, my brother-in-law and I still occasionally laugh about the looks we exchanged when we went to that soggy, wilted buffet. Oh, it was a memorable experience. Although I sympathize with the fact that husband’s cousin was probably on a budget, if she was going to have an outdoor wedding, why choose August? Mid to late September would likely had much better weather.

      Most of the weddings I have been to were much less eventful than that one, but generally, I have found that even when I have occasionally had to attend one without a plus one, there was at least something to enjoy or be amused by.

      So Gertrude needed to suck it up, and not make an issue of bringing her sister, especially since coworkers were there. But Gertrude sounds like a strange bird, anyway, especially after that bizarre email when she left her job.

  2. Ellis Bell*

    There’s always someone like this if you plan a wedding that involves at least one not-close, not-awesome person. Personally I agree with Alison and would have pushed her towards a “no” since you didn’t want her there anyway. “It’s okay if it’s too boring for you, I’ll just put you down as a no and then you can do something fun with your sister that night instead.”

    1. Consonance*

      At my wedding, we invited one of my husband’s friends. Not a particularly close friend, but they hung out kind of regularly. We didn’t offer a plus one to him because he wasn’t in a relationship (we had the same rules as OP for figuring that out). He did the same thing – adding a friend’s name to the RSVP card. My husband let him know that he didn’t have a plus one and he agreed without argument. Come to the day of the actual wedding and he “couldn’t make it” because his car “broke down”. Obviously with the quotation marks we assume he just didn’t want to come without a friend (he drove for 100% of his job, so his car breaking down would’ve been a much bigger deal). He really wouldn’t have known anyone else there so I totally get it, but I think people are too hesitant to simply say that they can’t attend. Much better to just say “I wish I could, but I won’t be able to attend. Wishing you a wonderful day!”

      1. Ellis Bell*

        I think a lot of these sorts of tiffs come about because some people think it’s rude to decline. A friend got told off by someone being very defensive who was a declining an invitation because she couldn’t accommodate kids at the venue: “It’s not my fault, we can’t get a babysitter!!” When she told him it was perfectly fine and they’d just see him another time with the kids, he was flabbergasted.

        1. Adam*

          I suspect that these people would consider it galling if you would dare decline their wedding invitation, and so assume everyone else feels the same way. We’ve certainly had people we’ve known that decided to have their weddings in an expensive holiday destination far from where they lived and grew up and then were incensed when lots of people declined due to the expense.

          1. Ellis Bell*

            Actually, no. My friend didn’t have a lot of money and while she only invited people who were very welcome, people who didn’t want to come cut the expenses.

      2. And so it is and so it shall be*

        I recall in my 20s feeling guilty for declining a sorority sister’s wedding (it was out of town, we didn’t stay particularly close though I was very fond of her). One of my best friends who had recently gotten married told me that the couple NEEDS people to say no, they likely can not accommodate 100% of their guest list at the venue. Ever since then, I feel like I’m easing a couple’s worries when I decline, lol.

      3. SpaceySteph*

        Omg I had to check to see if this was an old post and you were me, because I have almost an identical story right down to the car breaking down.

        Except in our case this friend was renting a room from my husband aka LIVING IN HIS HOUSE. But he (at the time a mid-30s man) was notorious for dating women at our local university (and getting into messy situations with them, like the case of an ex boyfriend’s broken bong and small claims court) and I did not want to host his 21 year old messy flavor of the week, so we invited him with no plus one.

        Weirdest part is that my husband returned to the house after the wedding to collect some things (he moved into my house after we married) and this friend/roommate didn’t even say a word about the wedding. Not “sorry I missed it” or “how was it?” Not. A. Word.

      4. Ellie*

        That seems so insanely rude to me, to actually write an extra name on an invitation. I can understand phoning the bride or groom and asking if someone can attend, sure, maybe they forgot you had a new boyfriend or something. But to try to force the issue like that, at someone’s wedding? Who would do that?

        Either way OP, I think you handled an extremely rude person with a lot of grace. I actually think you could have taken things further if you’d wanted to, by disinviting her, or calling her out on her rudeness. But you chose to minimise drama at work and I can’t fault you for that. Gertrude was going to be offended anyway.

        1. allathian*

          Yes, kudos to the LW for handling Gertrude’s rudeness with so much grace. It didn’t eliminate the drama completely, but I suspect that it could’ve been worse, say if she’d rescinded Gertrude’s invitation in front of the rest of the office.

          I get it that people in small offices, particularly in small towns, can get their social and working lives enmeshed to a point that trying to separate them becomes difficult, if not impossible.

          I don’t think I’ve ever been happier about my decision not to allow my work friendships to develop into actual social friendships than when I read posts like this one. Nobody needs to feel put out about not getting an invite to my social event because their being my coworker means I won’t even consider inviting them. I’m not on social media so my coworkers won’t even know about my events unless I choose to tell them after the fact.

          My husband and I chose to have a small wedding, and because I was 8 months pregnant at the time, none of our friends who’d had large weddings questioned our decision. Our friends are decent people so I don’t think any of them would’ve seriously questioned our right to have the small wedding we wanted, but if I hadn’t been pregnant I suspect that there might’ve been some “friendly” teasing about it, like “I invited you to our wedding and you didn’t reciprocate, how rude!” followed by a wink or a nudge in the ribs. One of my husband’s friends even thanked us for the inspiration, he and his wife also had a small wedding.

          I really don’t understand why some people make such a fuss about not getting an invitation to a wedding. Unless I’m particularly close to the couple, I find weddings boring at best and actively unpleasant to attend at worst. The least fun weddings I’ve attended were those I went to as my husband’s plus one where I didn’t know anyone except my husband, MIL, her husband, and my SIL. But I went for my husband’s sake and socialized freely with people I didn’t know and probably will never meet again. I’m introverted enough to find that exhausting, but I’m pretty good at masking my introversion so I don’t think anyone really noticed my lack of enthusiasm. I’m just glad that all of these weddings were scheduled either during my long vacation or during a less busy period at work so that I could take PTO to recover.

      5. Summer*

        For our wedding we invited my husband’s aunt and her family (4 total). His aunt then asked if her son’s girlfriend could also attend. We had never met her before and weren’t thrilled with it but agreed. Then, a couple weeks before the wedding, his aunt said that it would now just be her attending for reasons I can’t remember. She ended up backing out a few days before the wedding. So that was five spots that we could have filled if they had just said no from the beginning. We also had a friend of my husband call him the day of the wedding to say she and her husband couldn’t come. Otherwise we had everyone else show (110 guests) so overall it was a great turnout and we just rolled with it. But people are definitely strange when it comes to weddings!

    2. ASD always*

      At mine it was a mid-30s-aged cousin throwing a fit that her boyfriend of three months (who I didn’t even know about) wasn’t invited. When we had a maximum venue capacity of 50 and 56 actual family members, including long-term cohabiting partners.

      She refused to attend without him. I shrugged. They broke up within the first six months of my marriage anyway.

      1. Le Sigh*

        This is making me grateful that my biggest guest list problems were 1) getting the invite list to a manageable size within venue capacity and 2) a few guests who sent back RSVP cards without their names attached (though we had a very good idea of which two they were, since…well, it’s on brand and we love them for it). My friend numbered her RSVPs to avoid that problem, which was smart!

        1. SpaceySteph*

          I learned this trick from my mom, who numbered my bat mitzvah RSVPs circa 2000 for this exact reason, with a little penciled number on the back.

        2. Rainy*

          It’s easier to avoid the predictable problems when you are following on a chain of weddings. Ours was the fifth of five weddings among family and friends (all of which either Mr Rainy or I were in the wedding party for) in about eighteen months, and we took such careful note of what worked and didn’t work. Our wedding definitely went smoother for it! For example, we didn’t have speeches because the speeches had gone so poorly at literally every wedding we’d attended.

          1. allathian*

            Yeah, the worst speech I’ve heard was at my friend’s wedding, when the father of the bride started his speech with something like “The day we brought (my friend) home from the hospital…” and went on for 45 (sic!) minutes, in three languages yet. By the end, the bride’s smile looked more like a grimace and the groom looked visibly bored by the whole thing. The best man who was acting as emcee was the only one who applauded audibly at the end, and if anyone else had prepared a speech they didn’t deliver it, for which everyone was grateful. A few years later when the bride’s sister got married, she told her father that the emcee was tasked with ensuring that nobody’s speech ran longer than five minutes and that if he couldn’t promise to stick to that, she wouldn’t allow him to give a speech at all. In the end, he didn’t give a speech, just a slightly longer toast than usual.

            Another mistake many couples, or often their MOHs and best men, make is to overschedule the wedding with games and events like bouquet throwing, snatching the bride, etc. In one case, the groom had such trouble finding the bride that the catering service was getting antsy to serve the cake and coffee, and most guest were getting a bit impatient because while the search for the bride was going on nothing else was happening, and it felt like hours although it was probably only about 45 minutes.

    3. Bear Expert*

      My wedding was the worlds tiniest wedding, multiple states from where my husband and I live (but where he grew up and where our patents were living at the time.)

      The invite drama came from his mom inviting her cousin and their entire family, who I had never met, without asking us. And then having to uninvite them, because I wasn’t calling a complete stranger and telling them my MIL overstepped. They would have been almost 20% of the wedding.

      My MIL isn’t the worst boundary pusher in the entire world, but I do have to stay on my toes. She and I live by very different rules, and hers do not include “believe when someone says what they’re going to do” and then she gets her feelings hurt. Conversely, I’ve had to learn that I can’t believe when she says she’s going to do/not do something, and then she gets her feelings hurt when I rudely insist I need proof. Its some classic Ask vs. Guess culture stuff, we don’t hate each other, we just don’t communicate well.

  3. Anonym*

    OP, just want to share appreciation for you pushing back and not letting Gertrude bring her uninvited guest. That had to have been uncomfortable, but you did the difficult, reasonable thing. Plus you gave her the opportunity to correct an incorrect assumption about how the world works. Whether she took it or not, I think it was a good thing.

      1. Consonance*

        Yeah, wedding etiquette is really poorly represented by all the TV shows and books out there. If she’d never been invited to a wedding as an adult before, I can totally understand that she thinks everyone gets a Plus One. They don’t. Some people (very social? very rich? IDK) might organize their weddings that way. But the “actual” etiquette is that the people to whom the envelope is addressed (or more formally, the inner envelope) are the people who are invited. And if you misunderstood and are later corrected, a modicum of grace is called for. “Oh I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I’ll just come myself/I don’t think I’ll be able to attend in that case. Thank you for the invitation! I wish you a wonderful day.”

        2. londonedit*

          Absolutely. In my culture, unless it explicitly says ‘and guest’ on the invitation, you should understand that you’re the only one invited and you can’t randomly invite someone else to come along with you. Weddings are expensive and in British culture the reception is a sit-down meal, so the bride and groom will need to confirm numbers well in advance so they know how many people will need seats and meals.

          We do have a cultural thing where extra guests are often invited to the evening part of the wedding – you’ll have the closer friends and family who will go to the wedding ceremony and the full reception including drinks, sit-down meal, toasts/speeches, and the evening party do, but then often you’ll have a sort of second tier of guests who are just invited to the evening do. If Gertrude was just invited to that, and she asked whether she could bring her sister, then maybe – MAYBE – that would be OK. Though there are still issues of numbers in terms of how many people the venue can accommodate, and there’s usually an evening buffet which again you need numbers for and which the bride and groom will be paying for. And the couple would still be well within their rights to say no, sorry, we’re not doing plus-ones.

          If Gertrude didn’t know the usual etiquette, fine, but she should have said ‘Oh, I’m sorry for misunderstanding’ and then either declined the invitation if she really didn’t want to go without her sister, or accepted on the understanding that only she was invited.

          1. Zoe Karvoupsina*

            My cousin did that and put me and my sister and our parents in separate tiers. Ironically, my mother was never going to attend that wedding, because she dislikes my uncle so much she wasn’t going to eat food he paid for.

    2. Sloanicota*

      Yes, you handled it well – I’m always confused by the letters that are like, “Gertrude did this weird thing and I don’t like her and she’s mean to me – so of course I had to do the thing she wanted.” There was nothing to lose here! That said, it sounds to me like Gertrude also grew after leaving the job, and I certainly had some weird ideas and behaviors in my very first job (people kept telling me “fake it till you make it,” but that’s not always the right advice for young people IMO) so I’m willing to give her grace on that one. At least, that’s how I’d choose to interpret that last message from her.

      1. A Girl Named Fred*

        I interpreted the last message from Gertrude as attempting to get some kind of last word in, like, “I definitely don’t HATE any of you, (especially you who I have been extra rude to for a while) I just needed to go somewhere BETTER with BETTER people.”

        And I either would’ve ignored it or responded with a plain, “Bye!”

        1. ItWasMyWedding*

          Hello! OP here.

          Yes I definitely got that feeling from her reply. I actually wrote back “I don’t know why anyone would think that” and she was like WELL. JUST IN CASE. ANYONE THOUGHT SO. I don’t hear any of YOU hate (capitalization are mine).

          1. Rainy*

            Lol amazing.

            I just left my old job a couple of months ago, and there was a new hire right before I left who was already showing herself to be the worst kind of coworker. She has done a bunch of stuff that is actively bad (while not doing the job she was actually hired to do, of course), but by far the weirdest thing I’ve heard of yet was what she said to me when I sent out the broad notice that I was leaving, and your Gertrude immediately made me think of it.

            So my Gertrude (let’s say Trudy) heard I was leaving and caught me in the hall to ask how it was going. I was neck deep in packing up my household at the time, as my new job is halfway across the country, and I made some joke about packing up everything we owned and how much I needed a packing montage, and she said “Oh, I’d be happy to come over and help, just tell me where you live–I love that stuff.”

            I had literally met her for the first time a week before. My brain was screaming, a la Bobby from King of the Hill, “I don’t know you!” but I said “Oh, that’s kind of you but I couldn’t possibly” and she doubled down! I am still sort of shocked just remembering. I am proud of myself for keeping it classy, because my first, internal response was “That’s so weird of you.”

            1. Often feels obliged to offer twice*

              Hunh.

              Neurotypical small talk is over-rated, when it first involves making people feel bad for your “terrible” predicament; then cutting them dead when they feel obliged to emphasize that they would, indeed, be willing to help a relative stranger, in a time of need; and then mocking them retroactively in an anonymous forum.

              IMO, you should have stuck with your voiced response–that IS a darn nice offer, and there’s nothing freaky about people helping people move.

              1. Rainy*

                Bold of you to assume that:

                A) I’m neurotypical

                B) My joke was intended to make anyone feel bad for my predicament–it was literally a joke about how tedious tasks are presented in movies

                C) That she’s a nice person (she is not)

                There is nothing freaky about people helping people move. There *is* something freaky about the specific way she said it.

                1. Ellie*

                  I would have been creeped out by it too. There aren’t many people I’d let handle my intimate possessions like that.

              2. Aldabra*

                A lot of people don’t want coworkers, especially ones they already don’t like, handling their personal belongings. Moving one’s house is rather intimate, so it’s usually only trusted good friends/family or hired movers (who are strangers) who are invited to help move. The offer may have been kindly meant, but it is definitely not normal.

              3. Kella*

                You’re doing an awful lot of mindreading and interpreting Rainy’s comment in a strangely manipulative light.

                1. Despachito*

                  We were not there and I trust Rainy that this particular instance was inappropriate, but I see where Often feels obliged is coming from.

                  It is indeed sometimes difficult to tell small talk from a genuine need, and I have read and heard more than once about people who were helped by almost strangers and were grateful for it because they were in a bad situation and didn’t have anyone else to help.

                  So I can easily see a kind, maybe socially awkward, person misjudging that and making a fool of themselves for something that was basically coming from a good place. (although this was not the case)

                2. Rainy*

                  Just to let you know what kind of person Trudy is…I was checking in on a pal from my old job this morning to see how she’s doing, as she’s going out on mat leave very soon, and she told me that that very day she’d gotten an email from Trudy saying demanding that my pal, who’s wrapping up her work so she can be out for multiple months, do a project that had been assigned to Trudy.

              4. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

                This isn’t a confusing small talk thing. It’s never good to invite yourself over to someone’s home or other personal space first, even to help; they need to invite you first to indicate that they find you safe. In etiquette, we are all vampires.

            2. Ellis Bell*

              That would make my brain screech to a standing halt, in horror. My ex used to do that all the time actually, (offer to help random people move).It was always received the way you’d expect when a stranger wants to go through your stuff. It got us into really big trouble one time, because obviously… weird. One time we literally had just met a guy in a bar who was talking about his move (I didn’t feel in the slightest bit bad for him, I understood he was just making small talk) and then my ex pipes up offering to help (in spite of me stabbing him under the table to make him stop). Obviously, the guy refuses but my ex tells him to call us at our hotel and gives our hotel number in case he changes his mind. Yes he’s an idiot. The guy comes over to our room later, because he thinks the weird offer is code for “come have a threesome”.

    3. ferrina*

      Yes! OP wrote to ask if they did anything wrong, but they did everything perfectly right! They were clear, they held firm against someone asking for something unreasonable, and they were an absolute role model start to finish.

  4. VP of Monitoring Employees’ LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

    We made it easy: Everyone was allowed a Plus One.

    (Of course, not everyone had someone to bring, and not every +1 was a spouse or Significant Other. In one case, a coworker’s husband couldn’t make it, so I suggested that she bring her college-age daughter instead.)

      2. doreen*

        That kind of depends on the specifics – everyone invited to my daughter’s wedding got a “plus one” but once you took out the established couples (who were always both going to be invited) the “plus ones” would have added a maximum of five people.

        1. Megan*

          We did the same thing. We invited maybe like 200 people between the A and B list of invites (B list went out as we got declines and had room) and maybe like 160 attended. Of those, very few were single adults, so we just gave them all a +1 knowing that most would not use it (exception to this was single family members since the entire family would be there for them to hang with- one had a boyfriend we didn’t know about that she asked to bring and we said yes.) I think maybe like 5 people brought a +1. Of those, two were kinda random casual dates that out of town guests brought which we were fine with since it gave them a travel companion, and one was a friend of the guest because his wife couldn’t come and it was a far trip for him where he’d only know like 4 people at the wedding. In the end, I think paying for those 5 extra people since we had the room, was worth it for the enjoyment of our guests. I get not everyone is able to accomodate that, but if you’re able to, it’s nice.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          My great aunt, I’d probably only spoken to her once or twice in my life because she’s not all that close to her sister, my grandmother. I hadn’t invited any great uncles/aunts (even the one I really liked) because I have lots of them and was already at capacity with parents siblings and cousins. It was unlucky that she even had access to me during the wedding planning period but coincidentally she was at a cousin’s birthday dinner (found out later she’d invited herself). At the dinner she said “I’m not invited to your wedding, even though you’re having it on my birthday!” I said, “that’s right, have a nice birthday though”. She was super offended, but I didn’t care. My grandfather had passed away recently, so my grandmother actually did have a plus one that she could use so later on I asked my grandmother I’d she wanted her sister with her, and she just said “no way, I’m happy with my family”. I had another family member drop out, and invited the great aunt who I actually liked, and who had manners.

          3. Meep*

            I had something similar, but also completely different in that my estranged aunt (who estranged herself) was mad I didn’t tell her I eloped. We eloped 3 days before my cousin’s wedding since it was our 10th anniversary and when we planned it, we assumed they were going to get married MID-Month. (Our anniversary was the last day of the month.)

            Madam, I was just trying to not spoil your nephew’s wedding, and you have been nothing but cold to my husband to the point, you haven’t spoken to me in five years because I didn’t break up with him like you asked me to. She was also furious we didn’t tell HER we bought a house. We hadn’t told anyone but our parents.

            1. Ellis Bell*

              Oh my god yes; the coldness to the groom is the hallmark of these people who hassle the bride. If I hadn’t been able to shut my great aunty down, my follow up was going to be: “You can come if you can name my fiance”.

          4. Ellie*

            I had the same thing, I offered plus ones to everyone who came, but got in trouble because I didn’t invite my good friend’s mother. I could understand her point of view, she had seen me grow up, but we already had over 130 people and she’d low stakes stalked my future husband while drunk at certain points in her past (she was pretty troubled) and he didn’t want her there. It took a long time for the snide remarks to die down with that one. We also got in trouble for not inviting my husband’s mother’s friends from church. Etiquette can get pretty complicated.

            I also got in trouble because one of our couple friends had gotten divorced and we invited them both with a plus one. At the time, that felt like the right thing to do but I wish I hadn’t.

    3. Person from the Resume*

      Growing up I went to a lot of weddings of family members. They were all buffet with no assigned seats.

      Apparently in other parts of the country, people assign seats to guest and purchase a meal for them. It sounds like LW wedding was one of these.

      LW was great and perfectly polite. Gertrude was not. Maybe Gertrude misunderstood ( and was unfamiliar with assigned seating and catered meals at a wedding), but she got rude and argumentative and there’s no excuse for that.

      1. wondermint*

        Yeah, my experiences for all weddings of my friends have been assigned seating with a purchased meal (I’m in my 30s). Everything is heavily planned, curated, and detail-oriented. It takes most of my friends over a year to plan them, just for it all to be unleashed over 8 hours or so.

        Weddings today are excuses to act like a a member of the upper class for a day. They’re insane.

        1. Observer*

          Everything is heavily planned, curated, and detail-oriented. It takes most of my friends over a year to plan them,

          Eh, you can do assigned seating with purchased meals in waaay less than that. What you do need a good caterer, and possibly (depending on the level of detail you care about) a decent party planner. My wedding (decades ago) was planned in 3 months. None of my kids weddings went substantially longer than that. And I know plenty of people who managed engagements in 6 weeks. All of them with purchased meals, many with assigned seating.

          Not that it really matters in this context.

          1. wondermint*

            I’m not saying all weddings take over a year to plan, but there has been this pressure, maybe with the advent of social media and picturesque Pinterest boards, to get the entire ambiance *just right.* This take much more time and effort compared to decades ago. I’m glad your kids were able to move on a more abbreviated schedule. Many venues around my area are simply booked a year+ in advance.

            As another commenter mentioned, given that communities don’t stay put like they used to, there is some desire to make a nice experience for those guests who are traveling in. I believe this is why weddings have moved from one day celebrations to entire weekend affairs.

            1. Richard Hershberger*

              More minutely choreographed events are not my idea of making it a nice experience. If I travel for a family or friend group wedding, I would rather spend time with them informally. If I don’t know anybody apart from the happy couple, I am happier making a short trip of it.

              1. Glad I'm Retired*

                Years ago (60’s and 70’s) wedding receptions were usually in a rented hall or backyard with a buffet set up. I actually had more fun than the formal “rubber chicken” dinners and assigned seating.

                1. Random Biter*

                  Yep, yep, yep…my grandma, who was a baker, did our wedding cake as our gift. The rest of the fam kicked in with food..stuffed cabbages, fried chicken, potato salad, etc. Reception was at my mom’s house. Done and done. No drama and good memories.

                2. Lady Danbury*

                  As someone who has been to probably more than my fair share of weddings, I prefer assigned seating. Maybe I’ve just been lucky but in my experience brides tend to be really thoughtful about assigning people who know each other and/or will get along well, so I’ve always enjoyed sitting with my friend group/similar aged cousins/other coworkers/etc. Unassigned seating can be such a crap shoot, unless you’re one of the first people to make it into the hall.

                3. roisin54*

                  My parents had their 1976 wedding reception in the function room of a local restaurant, I think there might’ve been about 30-40 people there. Her stepmother made all the arrangements, her aunt made her dress, and since it was the 70s she wore a wreath of flowers on her head instead of a veil. They seem happy in the photos I’ve seen.

                4. Seeking Second Childhood*

                  My sister did open seating years before me–and my father’s secretary sat with him because she knew almost no one else.

                  May I stress that left MOM sitting with a different table than her own husband.

                  And that is why I had assigned seating at my wedding!

              2. bamcheeks*

                We had several people coming from other countries and a few from other continents, so we had Thursday night dinner with our parents, Friday night ceremony + party, Saturday picnic (which turned into pub lunch because it was tipping it down), Saturday night dinner followed by a late night bar, and then one group of friends organised a visit to a nearby tourist attraction on Sunday and we accidentally ran into them all at brunch. It was great!

              3. Geriatric Rocker*

                I went to the local pub/sports bar to catch up with friends and there was a wedding reception underway. In the bar, surrounded by large screen tvs showing rugby and horse racing. The speeches were competing with the race callers.

              4. allathian*

                I agree with you, Richard. Thankfully all the weddings I’ve ever attended have been one day events. Wedding showers and rehearsal dinners are unheard of here. Stag and hen nights exist, but they’re generally held a month to a few weeks before the wedding. I’m in Finland, and here stag and hen nights are very heavily connected to drinking culture. Those of my friends who don’t drink didn’t have hen nights.

                A family scandal happened when my aunt’s wedding was canceled at the last minute when her fiance never showed up at the church because his stag night went completely overboard. My mom’s mom and sisters had spent several days cooking, so the bride changed out of her wedding dress and the guests who stayed, mainly from our side of the family, ate as much of everything they could except the wedding cake, which they donated to the church. I’m not sure what happened to the leftovers, but my grandma probably put everything in the freezer that she could could. The cake had sugar icing so it was still safe to eat the following Sunday. They’d hired the church hall for the reception, so they just left the cake there with a note to the parish volunteers who ran the after church coffee shop about the donation.

                In the middle of the non-reception, the hungover and unshowered groom showed up, and the bride broke up with him in front of a room full of witnesses who gave her a standing ovation. The ex-groom had to move out of the village where my mom’s FOO lived because nobody would give him the time of day. According to family legend his parents were so ashamed of his behavior that they seriously considered moving, and were only convinced to stay when the whole village, one by one, insisted that they stay (this sounds like something out of Anne of Green Gables!). They had a farm to run, so they did stay. Their son was welcomed back into the fold a few years later when he’d stopped drinking and my aunt had married someone else and moved away.

                This non-wedding happened about 3 years before my birth. The story was still told at family events when I was well into my teens.

          2. Ellis Bell*

            Yeah there’s simply no way around the numbers and a buffet actually costs more money as Lost Academic rightfully points out. I love simple weddings where the emphasis is on just being comfortable, but it’s not fancy to make sure you have enough food and that the venue is safe. My aunt just planned a very simple anniversary party with a buffet at a no frills working men’s club, and they still charged her per head. People who actually think there’s such a thing as a free dinner have simply never planned a party that involves feeding people.

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              I remember in Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking one of her essays was about “how much it costs to get married on the cheap.” She got married in a friend’s loft, they were friends with the judge who married them and weren’t charged a fee, and had an afternoon Champagne and cake only reception. “From the cost,” she wrote, “You would think we were having a formal wedding in Central Park and feeding hundreds of people a five course meal.”

          3. Chirpy*

            I mean, I have a friend who planned her wedding in a couple of weeks while evacuating from a natural disaster, but I know she’d always wanted a small wedding and it was basically immediate family only!

            Most weddings I’ve been to still need an accurate headcount even if they are served buffet style. You still need the correct number of chairs and food, even if it’s not plated for you.

          4. B*

            Also depends heavily on location. If you want to have a wedding in NYC, for instance, you need to be booking all this stuff a year out, easily.

          5. Panhandlerann*

            Decades ago, I had six months to get mine together, which was considered plenty at the time. But when my daughter got married one decade ago and we had the same amount of time, it was such a struggle. So many venues were already booked. That’s the real problem.

            1. Rainy*

              We signed the contract for our venue about 8 months before the wedding, which was essentially last-minute for wedding planning. My MIL, however, had already been informed that she was no longer welcome to communicate directly with me about the wedding or indeed anything at all because she had started demanding every minute detail more than a year before the date we’d set and could not take “we don’t know” for an answer.

        2. Fingus*

          This is true, AND it’s true that weddings these days often involve a lot of guests traveling (vs hometown affairs where almost everyone is local), so there’s an expectation/desire to make it a nice experience for close people who are sharing time and travel budgets to join.

        3. TiffIf*

          LOL My sister got engaged on May 13 and then married on September 20 the same year. But my religious tradition has a VERY different wedding culture than is the mainstream In particular the wedding itself is a small event usually only close family and friends, no children no extras; and the reception is the big party and that often is done on a shoestring calling in favors from friends and family for prep assistance; I made dozens of table favors for my sister’s reception when I was 17 and made dozens of scones for my best friend’s reception when I was 30 something.

          1. TiffIf*

            Oh wait no – mixed updates. Sister got engaged on June 11 and then married on September 20 of the same year.

        4. Irish Teacher.*

          Looking from Ireland…8 hours…would be short. My friend’s wedding started around midday or 1pm with the church service and we got to bed at around 5:30am. And there was an afterparty the following evening.

          I was a bridesmaid and we had a wedding breakfast beforehand while getting hair and make-up done, so I was really involved in the whole thing from about 6:30 or 7am to about 5:30 am and then a party the following evening from say 6pm to midnight.

          And most engagements are 1-2 years, at least that I know of. I do know one person who did it in about 6 months, which was noteably short. I think that’s the shortest engagement I’ve ever known anybody to have.

          1. bamcheeks*

            My partner’s Irish so we’ve been to a lot of Irish weddings, and I still remember saying goodnight to the mother of the bride at one event at about 3:30am and her being absolutely scandalised that we were leaving so early. In Britain it’s quite respectable to leave at 3:30!

        5. Rainy*

          I’ve been to all manner of weddings in my almost 50 years on this earth, and while I’m sure there are people who use their wedding as an “excuse[s] to act like a member of the upper class for a day,” most of the time if you don’t know someone with a big enough house to host a wedding (or if you have to invite a bunch of people because, e.g. you both come from big families), the heavy planning and curating come along with having a party for 50-300 people in a commercial venue, which is not a seat of the pants endeavor due to the requirements of the venue itself.

      2. Lost academic*

        Even if you are doing a buffet, the food cost is based on your headcount. It’s also more expensive from a catering cost perspective to do buffet because you have to account for more food per person (learned this doing events so I knew that going into my own wedding). The cheapest option is typically a plated seating. Yes, in theory there might be an extra chair in that situation, but the reality is that every person adds to the cost of the event and it can quickly get out of control.

      3. Ellis Bell*

        Buffet caterers still need numbers! You also want to make sure you have enough seats, even if you don’t assign them. Most venues will also get really annoyed with you if the numbers go over fire regulations, and will turn people away; no one wants that drama on their wedding day. I think this kind of thing is not just ignorance of fancier parties, but ignorance of planning a party. They think they’re the only person who would bring an extra, but almost every single would bring a plus one if they could. It’s also a lack of caring about the details; in their minds it’s no more important than any other party, so if there’s a hiccup, or not enough food they can just leave and eat somewhere else.

      5. LL*

        the majority of the weddings I’ve been to have had assigned seatings and plated meals, but I’ve also been to buffet-style weddings and the food was still catered and the couple still had to pay a certain amount per person. Did you mean you’ve been to potluck weddings?

        1. Sitting Duck*

          I’ve been to a Potluck wedding! It was my roommate from college , it was beautiful, and very fitting for the couple. The property was right on a river, and the bride went kayaking in her wedding dress (which inspired me 8 years later to paddle board on my wedding day in my dress!)

          The food was delicious, homey, comforting, and it added a special aspect to the wedding, where all the guests contributed to the ‘start’ of the couples future. It was a small ceremony(about 30 people?) but again, it was so perfect for them. I honestly cannot image this friend getting married in any type of traditional ‘wedding’ that most people think of when they hear the word today.

          1. sheworkshardforthemoney*

            A friend had a catered dinner, wedding cake and then a potluck dessert table. Guests were encouraged to bring their favourite pie. It was great because people were asking for recipes.

        2. Parcae*

          I have been to both potluck weddings and buffet weddings where the food was not catered but prepared by friends and/or family of the happy couple. The most recent (a buffet) was this summer. I think it really depends on location; in many places, venues have rules about bringing in outside food or restrictions on which vendors you can use, so catering would be a must. But others are more relaxed.

        3. iglwif*

          Potluck weddings are great! (At least, they CAN be great.) But yeah, it’s bizarre to suppose that buffet-style catering (a) is not still priced per guest and (b) is cheaper than plated.

          People at buffets come back for second helpings.

          1. Observer*

            But yeah, it’s bizarre to suppose that buffet-style catering (a) is not still priced per guest and (b) is cheaper than plated.

            Actually, it’s not bizarre at all to expect buffet to be cheaper. Because in many cases it is cheaper. That’s not an assumption, but specific knowledge based on experience.

            The thing is that when you are catering, the food is not the only cost. And one big advantage that buffets can have is that you can often run this with a lot less labor. That is what every caterer I (and family members) have talked to tell me. Now, if you have a buffet with people manning it, that changes things, but otherwise, that one issue can make an enormous difference.

            1. allathian*

              All the weddings I’ve ever been to had buffet-style catering, usually unstaffed.

              The only time I’ve seen a staffed table was the special diets table at one wedding, to ensure that those who were eating gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, and vegetarian, etc. could get their portions before the omnivores ate everything in sight. In that case, the bride was vegan, they ate vegan at home, and the groom was a flexi-eater who sometimes ate meat at work.

        4. skadhu*

          Twenty years ago this month my partner and I had a potluck wedding. Wedding and reception were both held at pur friends’ house with 75 guests (they had a big house and regularly hosted big parties). We had croquembouche instead of wedding cake. Everyone had a ball, including us; we would never have done it any other way. Both of us agreed we would have hated a traditional wedding.

      6. ItWasMyWedding*

        LW here. Yup. Assigned tables for specific guests. Coworker table was our office people and my husbands office people. There wouldn’t have been a place for Gertrude’s sister to sit (unless she stole a place from another person ala wedding musical chairs).

      7. doreen*

        I’ve been to all kinds of weddings – there’s not much difference between a buffet and a seated dinner at the same place. The price might be a bit lower for the buffet, but either way you pay by the person and there will be exactly as many seats set up as guests being paid for which usually means assigned seats – otherwise you might end up with multiple tables with a single empty seat and have a few couples who have to sit at different tables with people they don’t know. Now, if you rent an event space or have the wedding in a backyard and use an outside caterer where you pay by the tray , you might be able to avoid having assigned seating because in those situations you can set up a couple of extra tables.

        1. Seeking Second Childhood*

          Restaurant family & friends taught me that buffets are MORE per person than plated.

      8. Ellie*

        We had a buffet as well but we still had to give a number to the caterers, for the drinks package as well.

    4. Not on board*

      Not to mention some venues have limited space so it may not be possible to give everyone a plus-one. It’s nice if you can do it, but often difficult choices need to be made.

      1. KateM*

        I was to a wedding with limited space so the invitation said no children. Based on the amount of shuffling (bringing extra seats and tableware) that happened on the venue, there were still two guests who thought it fine to bring their children unannounced. (There were also a couple of babies about whom the couple had been informed and who were hold by parents so took no extra room.)

    5. cloudy*

      My venue only had space to seat 50 per fire code so there was much drama over who would/wouldn’t get invited… It made it easy to decline people who asked about invitations for distant family I’d never even met though. “We’re not allowed that many people, sorry” was pretty compelling.

    6. IT Relationship Manager*

      I do appreciate people who are willing (and able) to give capacity to non-spouses. I tend to drag my friend to weddings of my actual friends. (I always ask if there is room for that and just in my personal experience there has been.) I just want someone to travel the distance there and back with and usually she knows the person too.

      If there isn’t room, I understand! Wouldn’t have any hard feelings and I wouldn’t try and force the issue like this person did. Especially if it was for a coworker, I wouldn’t even ask lol. Usually those are local anyway so not something I’d even try to bring a guest, even on the level of a spouse. Often those invites are to round out numbers anyway.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        The one time I brought a friend as a plus-one was when a college friend who lived elsewhere and had gotten married elsewhere (it was a small wedding and sort of destination in that it was on a Caribbean island but she had grown up there so it was also her hometown) had a celebration reception in my state (where her husband is from) a few weeks later. Several members of our college friend circle were invited. I asked her if I could bring my roommate, who had also gone to college with us and while she wasn’t very close with the bride, was very close with several other people who would be there. Bride said of course! But I doubt I would have brought my roommate had bride said they didn’t have the space, and I definitely wouldn’t have argued.

        Kind of side-eyeing Gertrude’s sister – who the heck wants to go to a wedding where the only person they know is a coworker of the bride? That sounds utterly boring to me.

        1. sheworkshardforthemoney*

          When my daughter’s best friend got married my invitation didn’t include a plus one. I was privy to a lot of wedding details/drama because my daughter was a bridesmaid so I understand the rationale. I relaxed, met new people and could see the dynamics at play during and after the wedding. Sadly, the marriage lasted less than 3 years and it wasn’t a surprise.

        2. I&I*

          Who knows if she even did? I mean, if they’re alike then it’s possible neither of them has any friends except each other (because I doubt Gertrude has many friends with that attitude), and so dressing up for an outing with free food might be their idea of a good day. But it’s just as likely there’s another letter floating around the advice column ecosphere headed, ‘My Nightmare Sister Is Pressuring Me To Go To A Total Stranger’s Wedding With Her.’

        3. LadyVet*

          This is what always gets me — why would the plus-one want to go if they’ll only know their date?

          Granted, I am admittedly someone who will talk to strangers, but I also would look at a wedding as an event in which everyone is starting with some common ground, in that they know one of the people getting married. So that can be what you ask people you don’t know yet, or if they traveled…

          Again, though, I say this with the disclaimer that I’m an extrovert who loves to dance.

        4. Family Drama*

          I would never want to attend the wedding of someone I have never met before. I could do fine to make small talk with whoever I end up near, but I’d just be so detached from everything that the party is about.

          When my husband’s cousin got married, we had a commitment that meant I would not attend the wedding and that Hubby would travel later to our out of town thing. BIL had not been giving a plus one because he is not involved with anyone. BIL whined about how he can’t go to weddings alone because he feels so sad about how circumstances in his life have prevented him from having someone to spend his life with, so it was horrible that his cousin didn’t give him the chance to bring a friend for support.

          Instead of being a grown up who uses their words and actually reaching out to his cousin to maybe see if the plus-one thing could be changed for him, BIL and MIL pressured us to RSVP that we were both coming and not let anyone know until the day before the wedding that I was going out of town. That way BIL’s “date” (not a real date) could just use my spot.

      2. Dahlia*

        Yeah, honestly, as an aroace who doesn’t really plan on marrying, it’s pretty shitty to always be the person who doesn’t have a person at events and it’s another one of those places in society where romantic relationships are placed so much higher than non-romantic ones.

        1. doreen*

          I’m not going to say it doesn’t happen to you but I am wondering if there are any other differences – by which I mean in my world, the people who get plus ones are those in long-standing relationships with one person. Maybe they live together, maybe person A has brought person B to every get-together. I don’t really know what their relationship is ( I might assume, but I’m not with them at all times) – but the person who brings person B to a BBQ in July and person C to the one in August and yet another person to a Christmas get together is not usually going to get a plus one.

          1. Dahlia*

            I think in fact your world is the unusual one, because most people are not doing that, tbh, unless they are assuming it’s a romantic relationship.

            1. doreen*

              I’m sorry – I guess I wasn’t clear. I am assuming they are in a romantic relationship – but it’s often just an assumption and I would assume the same about you if you lived with Chris and/or brought Chris to every get together over a period of time and didn’t make a point of describing it as a non-romantic relationship. The difference I was referring to was between a Significant Other ( romantic or not) who accompanies you to social events and the situation where you might bring one person this month and another person next month ( romantic or not ).

              I have a friend who brought three different women along to events over the course of two months- he would not have gotten a plus-one even though I assumed they were romantic relationships.

              1. Dahlia*

                But I do talk about being aromatic and not being in a romantic relationship. What if I live long-term with a sister? Would you invite someone I call my long-term roommate?

                It’s exclusionary. It might work for your group but it feels not-great for me!

        2. Kella*

          I understand where you’re coming from and I absolutely agree it’s a problem that romantic relationships are seen as more legitimate than non-romantic ones. But if I were to go to a wedding alone and there weren’t enough family or mutual friends for me to connect with to keep me from feeling lonely and bored… I wouldn’t go. I just feel like if I need a specially picked person not associated with the bride and groom in order to protect me from feeling bored, then maybe it’s not worth it to go.

        3. amoeba*

          I agree with you! I do think that if you’re offering plus ones, it’s really nicer to offer them for everybody. Otherwise I’d only invite both parts of a couple if I actually know the partner and like them as well.

          It’s shitty for aroace people, but also for people who are unhappy singles (nothing worse than being in a room full of couples doing couple things as the only single! I was so happy I had a very good friend who was invited to basically all the same weddings as myself who was my “plus one” back then, going alone would have been a nightmare…), or even happy singles, but still feel like the odd one out.
          Also, judging people’s relationships (whether it’s committed/long/serious enough) just feels like its own slippery slope to me, so many ways you can accidentally offend somebody if you do that, especially if you don’t know them that well!

          Nah, I’m all for plus one for everybody or just invite the people you know and no partners you personally have nothing/little to do with. I know it’s a social convention, but in my view, it’s kind of a shitty one.

    7. bamcheeks*

      Same, and actually for me the point of +1s was very much so that everyone wasn’t bored! I wholeheartedly recommend it: several of our friends who were long-term single were absolutely delighted and touched by it, and it meant we didn’t have to do any “but how Serious is this relationship hmm?” policing. But I don’t think anyone who handles their guest list differently is doing anything wrong!

      1. BricksDont*

        My partner and I aren’t planning on getting married anytime soon, but I totally agree with this!! One of my best friends from childhood had a casual buffet style wedding and didn’t give me a plus one because my boyfriend and I weren’t “serious enough”- lo and behold, I’m still with him almost a decade later. I love her, but I’m still a little salty about this (I was also part of the bridal party, so I shelled out many dollars for various trips, clothes, shoes, etc.).

      2. Annie2*

        Same. We were fortunate to be able to afford that extra handful of plus ones, and it made it so much easier not to have to make some kind of judgment on each of our friend’s relationships. Also, like BricksDont, a then-close friend invited me (but not my partner) to her DESTINATION WEDDING. Of all the weddings one wants a plus one for!

    8. Florence Reece*

      Great, OP can connect you to Gertrude so you can invite her to your wedding!

      I brought a non-partner plus one to a friend’s wedding. The thing is, I asked my friend first. If she had said no, I wouldn’t have thrown a months-long fit over it. It’s not inherently bad that Gertrude wanted to bring her sister, it’s everything about her execution of it. How would you have handled it if one of your guests RSVP’d for themself and their Plus Two (or Three or Four, whatever) instead?

      1. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

        When my sister got married, one of her fiancé’s cousins RSVPed for 6 instead of 2 (instead of cousin & spouse, it was cousin, spouse, their 2 adult children and their children’s dates). Because of family dynamics, her fiancé didn’t want to make a fuss, so they let it go. None of them showed up, so my sister & her fiancé paid for 6 dinners that went to waste.

        2. anon here*

          I just gasped, for real.

          I hope whoever is responsible for maintaining those family dynamics paid for those plates.

        3. jtr*

          > When my sister got married,

          Lee, is that you?!? This is almost literally what happened at my wedding, except they RSVPd for seven people, and they and ONE of their adult kids did actually show up. And, yes, it was a plated dinner, although we didn’t do assigned seating.

          They also gave us super cheap printed towels, and my SIL who married a year later: a horse. Not salty at all. (all the caveats about gifts, of course!)

          2. Insufficient Sausage Explainer*

            So you got a cheap(-ass) roll of towels and SIL didn’t look her gift horse in the mouth!

        4. softcastle*

          Oh my god, yes, my ex-husband’s cousin did exactly this–we had barely interacted with them over the years and it was a small-ish wedding so we just invited her + her husband to the event.

          She RSVP’d two days later and had crossed off her “2” and wrote in “10”–she had invited all four of her stepchildren AND gave each one of them +1s so they “wouldn’t feel lonely.” I had never met 3 of the stepchildren, let alone their school-aged romantic partners. She pitched an absolute fit and my former MIL had us remove some friends so they could have seats. The cousin made sure to pull our photographer away from their duties to make sure she got formal portraits of them all with their surprise +1s “for her Christmas cards,” she said.

          Some people are incorrigible.

          2. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

            I guess my sister could have had it worse – the cousins could have showed up and monopolized the photographer!

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            All that’s missing is one of them deciding to propose to their SO on the dance floor or doing a gender reveal party!

        6. HSE Compliance*

          At our wedding, we did not invite any children as it was 1) a childfree wedding, like we wanted… and we paid for everything and 2) the reception was on a riverboat, and the liability of having children on said boat was not giving us the warm fuzzies. Plus, the only people that really had children were people that we didn’t like to begin with.

          My stepmom’s cousins (who I really disliked, but it made Mom happy to invite them) got their invites with their name + spouse, apparently called Mom to complain, who patiently explained all the above to them. They then all RSVP’d back no, they wouldn’t attend, with all of their kid’s names written in (and each of them had at least 4 kids), along with a crappy note of “here’s there names SINCE YOU FORGOT”. They then complained to Grandma that we didn’t send an apology and reinvite them and their children, which would have added an extra 20% seats.

          People get extraordinarily weird and entitled about weddings.

        7. The Prettiest Curse*

          I am just petty enough that I would have sent them an invoice. 6 uneaten dinners is a significant financial hit even if your caterer is relatively inexpensive. If you’re going to add that many people to the guest list, at least let someone know you’re not attending!

      2. Jackalope*

        I also was a big +1 fan for our wedding, including people who wanted to bring someone who wasn’t their romantic partner. But clearly that wasn’t an option for this LW, and she was perfectly in the right to tell Gertrude no. It’s common to invite +1s but also common not to; if someone tells you it isn’t an option, you respect that!

    9. Bast*

      Skipping over the point of this costing a lot more, the really odd thing is the reaction from someone who has to at least have a clue they were a courtesy invite. Gertrude is not someone who was close enough to LW who has the “standing” so to say, to pull off this type of outrage. I don’t think this reaction is appropriate at all, however, if the offended party had been LW’s best friend of 20 years, sister, or someone else who was really close to the LW and had wanted to bring someone else, the reaction would seem a bit less weird. Gertrude is a co-worker who is more on the periphery of LW’s life than the center.

      1. ferrina*

        Yeah, I don’t think that this is really a “just send everyone a plus-one!” solution. If someone wants to bring the drama at the wedding, they are going to bring the drama. Gertrude sounds like someone who would bring the drama.

    10. Turquoisecow*

      Most of the people we invited were married couples (or in a long term relationship). I don’t remember how I worded the invitations but a few single friends brought people and some didn’t. One of my friends brought a close friend of her that I don’t think she was romantically involved with but they had known each other forever and I didn’t have a problem with that. One person bringing a plus one wasn’t going to make or break the guest list, especially because some people we invited couldn’t come.

      If Gertrude had been less presumptuous about it like “I haven’t talked about (significant other) at work but I’d like to bring them to the wedding, is that okay?” Or even “my sister is visiting me that week and I don’t want to leave her alone, is it okay if I bring her?” I would have argued for OP to be understanding about a single additional person. But the complete disregard for not just etiquette but how invitations work, plus inviting her sister, not a significant other, means I also would have put my foot down and said no, and I’m glad OP did also.

    11. Criminally Competent*

      We also did this and one of my aunts RSVPed that she was also bringing her son, her son’s girlfriend and their kid. Uh, no ma’am. When she was informed that was not okay she declined to attend at all.

    12. sofar*

      I did this, and it did not make things easier. Several people took that to mean they could reply with “yes I am coming” but “I’ll let you know about my plus one later.” (At least the couples we invited by name replied yes/no on the RSVP card.)

      Repeated follow-ups prompted replies of, “Well I’m single, so I’m asking around, I may or may not bring someone, maybe my sister can come, maybe I’ll ask that guy I’m dating.” Finally, we communicated the final cutoff and told folks, “If we don’t have the name of your plus one by X date, we’ll look forward to seeing YOU, but we can’t accommodate any plus ones after that, because we need to print the seating chart and let the buffet and dessert caterer know.”

      Two people thought this was a violation of the Geneva Conventions and also a commentary against “single people.”

      All this to say … you literally cannot win.

    13. Tippy*

      As the eternally single person at a table full of couples, bless you. Because let me tell you it really feels like crap to be the 7th/9th/whatever wheel at every single wedding. And I’m fairly extroverted, I can’t imagine how it must feel for introrverts.

      But Gertrude still sounds like a jerk.

      1. Arglebarglor*

        Once I was the “single” person at a wedding of a couple who I didn’t even know well. My then-boyfriend was friends with them and had been invited and I was his plus-one, as we lived together. He was a jerk and decided he wasn’t going at the last minute (literally on the way from the church to the reception–he got a call to sub in a cover band for $50). I was too mortified to not go as well as these people were super nice and it was a small reception, they would have noticed. I went, wrote a nice check for a gift, ate dinner at a table of people I didn’t know at all, and then left the second the cake was cut. Boyfriend and I broke up shortly after that.

    14. Pretty Day*

      I did this too, but most people were part of a couple anyway and I didn’t invite any coworkers. And even then I still had a coworker trying to make me feel bad about not being invited even though no one else was and I had only known her for a few months. You’ll never make everyone happy with wedding invites.

    15. toolegittoresign*

      I did the same but it didn’t stop people from asking to bring more than a plus one. If there was one thing from my wedding I would do-over, it would be to reign in the guest list and be firm in telling people “no” when they asked to bring people. Rude people find a way to be rude no matter how accommodating you try to be.

    16. Dido*

      that’s nice of you, but I’ll fill up my limited venue space with people I actually know and care about and not with my coworker’s sister or the guy my cousin has been dating for 3 months

      1. amoeba*

        Well yeah, I absolutely get that, but then why have plus ones at all? I mean, not talking about couples where you actually know and like the partner, but partners, no matter how long-term, I don’t actually know or like? How is that different from somebody’s best friend or sister or whatever?

        1. basically functional*

          Because a long-term couple is considered a social unit, as Alison explained. Even if I don’t know or like my friend’s husband, inviting her without him would be rude because it violates the social convention. Siblings or friends are not considered social units and are not expected to be invited to things together. You can argue that it’s rude not to invite a single person to bring a plus one (I would disagree), but if so, it would be a different type of rudeness than not inviting a social unit together.

    17. Summer*

      We did the same thing – everyone got a plus one and kids were invited too. There weren’t too many kids though; under 10 in total.

  5. Lima Golf*

    Some people just don’t get wedding etiquette. I had to explain to my (college age) brother that his then-girlfriend may not automatically be invited to our cousin’s weddings the year that they started dating. He also just assumed that he would get a plus-one. It turned out that she did get invited, but couldn’t attend so many weddings in another state. And they are now married, so it wouldn’t have been a “and who was that girl in our wedding photos” kind of situation. But you can never assume!

    1. I should really pick a name*

      Some people just don’t get wedding etiquette

      That’s probably because wedding etiquette is far less standardized than some people seem to think it is.

      1. Observer*

        Except that this is not about “wedding” etiquette. It’s about basic politeness altogether. You don’t get to insist on inviting someone to someone else’s event. Period.

        As for telling someone “I want to come but I’m going to be bored”? What functional adult does that? To *any* event.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, I think “don’t cross out the number of people on your invite and add an extra person and accept for somebody who wasn’t invited” is more just…basic common sense than specifically wedding etiquette. I could understand Gertrude thinking it odd that she didn’t get a plus one if she was used to it being the norm, but I think she must have known she wasn’t expected to just…add her sister.

          1. Ellis Bell*

            The thing that really breaks my brain about it is they’re asking for a free dinner. I could see someone asking to bring an extra if it was a BYOB house party, but some people have absolutely no shame about freeloading. Take your friend out to dinner from your own pocket!

            1. Irish Teacher.*

              Yes, “oh, I’ll just add another person you have to pay for.”

              That would be rude in any context. If I offered to buy my friend a meal for her birthday or to thank her for something and she said “I’m just bringing my sister along,” well, it wouldn’t be such a big deal but it would still be pretty cheeky.

              I don’t think one needs to be familiar with any specific wedding culture to grasp that you don’t do that.

              And her comment about “well, you can’t stop me if I bring her anyway” makes it clear this wasn’t a misreading of the norms.

        2. Rusty Shackelford*

          This. You don’t have to be Emily Post to understand that badgering the host for a plus one, because otherwise your event will be boring, and being told no and threatening to bring one anyway, is rude.

        3. Saturday*

          Yeah, some of this stuff is pretty simple.
          1. If you’re not invited, don’t go.
          2. Don’t invite other people to someone else’s event.
          3. An invitation isn’t a summons. If there’s something about the invitation that doesn’t work for you, politely decline.

          1. N C Kiddle*

            Apparently 3 is not universally believed. I once wrote on my blog that I would find it very difficult to go to a wedding in the aftermath of a particularly existential breakup, and several different people replied to tell me it wasn’t about me so I should just suck it up and go. I couldn’t understand how, if it was not about me, my presence was so essential – surely the happy couple wouldn’t notice whether I was there or not – and they scornfully refused to elaborate. Just another way it’s apparently a minefield.

      2. MK*

        Fair enough, but is there really a country/culture/region/religion/group, in which the wedding etiquette allows you to invite a sibling to a coworker’s wedding? Wedding etiquette may vary, but I think if you receive an invitation only in your own name, everyone would understand it’s for them only.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          There are cultures where wedding invites are much more… open, for lack of a better word. No formal invitation card, no precise headcount. Traditionally the whole village would have shown up, nowadays it’s anyone loosely connected to the couple or their parents. Huge buffet with people drifting in and out. Definitely no seating chart. Estimating the amount of food and seating must be difficult, but the venues seem to be set up to be flexible.

          That said, an invitation card with one name on it and a prewritten number of people on the rsvp card should be a clear indication that that’s not the vibe.

    2. sofar*

      My husband (then-boyfriend of two years) invited me to his friend’s wedding. I asked if I was really invited and asked to see the invitation. We looked, and I was not mentioned on the invite, nor on the envelope (which was addressed to my husband only). So he replied yes for himself and went alone to the wedding alone.

      Plot twist. There was a seating card for me! It was so awkward. My husband was like, “Well, she wasn’t on the invitation!” They couple was shocked and was like, “Well of COURSE she was invited, we just didn’t know her name. Everyone gets a plus-1!”

      I head-desked pretty hard upon hearing that. All this to say, you are so right … invitation etiquette is a lost art, apparently. Nobody knows what they are doing.

      1. Consonance*

        Oh boy. Yeah, they were simply wrong on that one. If you don’t know someone’s name you can simply say “and guest.” Or ask. Or call your friend and explain.

        1. LL*

          Seriously! I’ve had a couple close friends who gave me a plus one even though I wasn’t seeing anyone and they just addressed the invitation to “LL and Guest.” It’s not that hard!

        1. Yeah...*

          They were not responsible for the printing of the invitations? The couple did not review the invitations once they were printed? It was someone else’s job to do review the invitation and that person didn’t have knowledge of the girlfriend?

          There are plausible reasons why this happened that don’t involve less than kind intent.

        2. doreen*

          My guess is that the list given to the venue included Husband and Guest (because it has to account for 2 people) but they didn’t think to write the invitation that way.

      3. Alternative Person*

        Same. A cousin managed to invite my parents but not me and my sibling to his wedding, then got shocked when only my parents showed. We’re similar ages too.

        Always put all the names. If in doubt, add a plus one and sort out the names later.

      4. amoeba*

        Hah, yeah, that almost happened to me! My boyfriend was invited to an old friend’s wedding and we kind of just assumed plus ones would be included. As we live in a different country, we went like “oh cool, we can combine that with a holiday in Scotland!” and proceeded with planning. Until like a few months before the event I realised – wait, there’s actually no “and guest” on the invite. Oh.
        My boyfriend did just ask his friend (I offered to stay behind obviously – for the wedding, not the trip) and they were absolutely happy to have me there (well, or at least pretended very well, who knows! I do know my boyfriend definitely gave them the option to say no though) – most of the people travelling further did bring plus ones, so I wasn’t out of place at all. Just some of “the lads” had apparently been offered to bring their girlfriends and opted against it because they preferred partying with the guys? Don’t ask me. Anyway, happy ending, but yes, wedding invites are not always easy to navigate!

  6. MsM*

    Honestly, I’d have gone with “I don’t want you feeling obligated to say yes to something you’ll be bored at, so I think it’s best if you don’t attend after all” rather than just “I’ll put you down as a no” and give her the opportunity to keep pushing/waffling. It doesn’t sound like it would have made things at work any worse than they ended up.

  7. Pterodactyls are under-cited in the psychological literature*

    LW, I am now ticked that you didn’t invite ME to your wedding and I am going to have all sorts of drama about it.

        1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

          Well, I don’t know Ptery very well, but maybe I could be *your* plus-one?

    2. Kimchi*

      I know right? I would have been a better guest than she was!!! I even would have bought you a toaster as a present ;)

        1. AnonInCanada*

          You’re just so lucky I wasn’t drinking a sip of coffee when I read that. I’d be suing you for making my monitor messy spitting it out in laughter! :-D

          Also: I believe there’s a trophy waiting for you for winning the Internet today. I just don’t know where you can go get it, because I never win that award. :-(|

    3. Heidi*

      I’m debating whether the “Gertrude may or may not bring her sister” drama was preferable to the “I invited other co-workers but not Gertrude” drama. I understand not wanting to exclude people in such an obvious way, but I also think that you shouldn’t have to invite people you don’t like to your wedding.

      1. Anonym*

        I think in this case OP retains the moral high ground. Excluding just one member of a group when it would be hard to prevent them from finding out would be unkind. Of course, moral high ground is only one element of comparing dramas!

      2. Potsie*

        I personally would prefer the “Gertrude may or may not bring her sister” drama because Gertrude was very clearly the one being rude. There is no way to invite everyone except one in a group without being rude so the “I invited other co-workers but not Gertrude” drama would have made OP look like the rude one.

        1. HonorBox*

          Yep. Gertrude could have been the one writing in to figure out how to navigate working with someone who excluded only them from their wedding. Inviting all coworkers was the right thing to do. Trying to shoehorn a plus one is not.

        2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          OP was doing the right thing and still trying to figure out what she could have done better.

          OP it’s not you, its Gertrude. You handled it perfectly. You can’t reason with unreasonable people. There was no magic explanation you could have given Gertrude that would have made her not be rude and unreasonable.

        3. Jenesis*

          I would have invited her, but then uninvited her as soon as she hassled me about the plus-one issue. Anyone who asked “Why are you being so mean to poor Gertrude?” would get the unedited details of how she tried to bring her own plus-one against my wishes, with a comment of “and that was weird and rude of her, and I don’t want someone like that at my wedding.”

          But then again, I’m not LW, and I don’t know how much social capital they have at this workplace. If Gertrude is best friends with the manager, it may not be worth it.

  8. Not on board*

    Yeah, people are definitely weird when it comes to wedding invitations. I appreciate being invited when I have a relationship with one of the people getting married but unless it was a super close friend, I don’t care if I’m not invited – saving me time, money, and aggravation.
    The “plus one” situation can be a dilemma if you have limited funds/space but your coworker was both very weird and very rude.

  9. Czhorat*

    The adding her sister as a guest and this : “Who’s going to stop me if I bring a guest anyway?” are two bits of the same attitude – that the rules not only don’t apply to her, but that she isn’t bound by the guardrails of social expectations. It’s possible to brazen through a situtation assuming someone else isn’t going to make it awkward, and sometimes you just get what you want – if the sister showed up nobody was going to physically bar her from the venue. That she’d suggest that makes her clearly the problem, and in a way that the usual means of dealing with normal people won’t work – almost everyone else would backpedal in extreme embarrassment after being told that the sister was NOT invited and that guests can’t just pencil-in a plus-one onto the invitation.

    1. AnotherSarah*

      YES! I once asked if I could bring a relatively-recent bf to a wedding, and was told no, and that didn’t seem like a huge faux pas on my part, but like…you need to accept the answer! It’s so bizarre and even if the initial penciling in was a faux pas, wtf to the rest.

      1. Consonance*

        Yeah, etiquette does vary, and we don’t need to be completely hamstrung by it. But the point of etiquette IMO is to provide clarity and comfort for everyone. An honest question doesn’t break etiquette. Being gracious is all we really need from one another.

    2. The Kulprit*

      Agreed, that’s well beyond normal levels of rude or bad manners. I’d wager that Gert’s age is only a small factor in her behavior.

    3. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      I made Gert’s mistake once (and yes, I was very young, and so was my marrying friend). I replied to a friend’s wedding invite by adding people to my rsvp card. More than one person. And not partners either, just friends. I don’t remember much about it except that — yes, I was thinking of it as a big party, rather than as a wedding. (It helps that it was on Oct 31 and was explicitely a costume party where the marrying couple came as a bride and groom.) And the family weddings I’d been to as a teen were backyard affairs. Anyway, my friend had to swallow a LOT of embarrassment and tell me that her Dad said he couldn’t afford all those people, and I was really embarrassed too. And while I didn’t handle it very graciously, at least I didn’t argue! (And I realized that I’d made a big mistake. I learned a lot that day.)

    4. carrot cake*

      “if the sister showed up nobody was going to physically bar her from the venue.”
      ———-

      Actually, I think plenty of people would, including the marrying couple. Why be pushed around at one’s own wedding? Sister isn’t on the guest list. Bye!

    5. Baela Targaryen*

      Yep – you don’t want to request something you know will be denied/will make you look bad having requested it, so you just skip that uncomfortable step where you’re the “bad guy” and instead make the person telling you to knock it off the “bad guy”

      The only way to stop these people is to publicly humiliate them.

    6. HSE Compliance*

      I had a couple (distant) family members attempt to make that statement.

      We actually had a couple people that were our informal bouncers that 100% would have thrown them out. Sadly? Happily? No one actually tested it.

      1. Catfish*

        Ha! You would not have wanted to try to crash my wedding.lol. People (various) would absolutely have thrown an offender down the front steps of the church and enjoyed the break from the formality.

  10. Moby*

    I got married young and so it was most my friend’s first wedding to attend. I had a friend that received a solo invitation but she wrote in that she was bringing three people. when I asked her about it she said that her college roommate had always wanted to go to a wedding. I kindly told her that I couldn’t accommodate three people and she said okay just put her down for two. I assumed she had a boyfriend and decided not to push it. Of course, she ended up bringing the roommate. :-)

  11. RCB*

    I do agree with Gertrude that people naturally expect to be able to bring a plus 1, but it’s NOT guaranteed, and she definitely did not pick up on every single clue that indicated that she was not allowed to, and then when the clues failed and she was told outright that she couldn’t bring a plus 1 that should have been the end of it, no further discussion and certainly no further pushback.

    So, yes, she could certain clarify if she was allowed to bring someone, but once told no that’s the end of discussion. And major kudos to you, OP, for sticking to your guns, because so many people cave to pushy people to avoid confrontation and the world would be so much better if people stopped doing that.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      See, I would hope for a plus-one if the couple were someone close to me. I would not expect a plus-one from a coworker. We’re already not that close; they’re not going to be close to my SO. I can be solo for an afternoon every now and then.

    2. Turquoisecow*

      I think if she had a significant other or if she has asked if she could bring a significant other then it would have gone down different. Like if my coworkers didn’t know I had a long term boyfriend and so invited only me, I might mention it if we were close. If I were OP I could forgive asking, even though by the time the invites go out the guest list is usually set in stone and not really open to adding more people unless a few people unexpectedly can’t attend. But just saying “I’m bringing my sister?” No.

    3. ecnaseener*

      And that’s the thing, she could ask to clarify whether she was allowed, but she didn’t even do that. She corrected the freaking number on the card.

    4. Bee*

      See, and I find the “I have to find a date to the wedding!!!1!” trope in movies fairly incomprehensible because the only wedding where I’ve had a plus-one was the one where I was a bridesmaid, so I’d be pleasantly surprised to receive one but would never expect it.

      1. iglwif*

        Yeah, I’ve always found that baffling, too. Why do you need a date to a wedding?

        … that said, I’ve been married since I was 23 and in a long-term relationship since I was 18, so I have not actually gotten a lot of wedding invitations that weren’t for both of us. I guess I went straight from “the invitation is for the whole family” to “the invitation is for a married couple” lol

      2. doreen*

        I’ve literally never gotten a plus-one but I don’t find the movie trope incomprehensible because I’ve known of situations where it happens. Usually, it’s when only one or two people in a larger group doesn’t have a known SO to invite – so two of my nephew got plus ones to my daughter’s wedding because all of the other cousins had SOs. Same with one of my husband’s cousins.

        1. LadyVet*

          I’ve always found the “I have to have a date, any date” idea for events odd. I had a lot of friends who brought randos to our senior prom and then had to sit by their side the whole time since they didn’t know anyone else, instead of dancing with their friends.

          If I had a plus-one for a wedding, and was trying to schedule a first or second date with someone, I might go ahead and ask if they’re interested, but that’s a lot.

          1. N C Kiddle*

            As a movie trope, it’s just a drama generator and nobody ever said movies had to match reality. When people do it in real life, if it’s not a case of taking the movies as a guide, it’s most likely insecurity about being single or a feeling others will judge them for it.

    5. Ellis Bell*

      When you’re just a colleague, and invited our of politeness though? I think there’s a huge difference between the much-anticipated wedding of someone you’re close to, and wanting your significant other to be a part of it and a wedding that you’re frankly admitting is going to bore you. Just don’t go! Totally agree about OP sticking to her guns though.

  12. wondermint*

    When it comes to wedding planning, it’s always something!

    The only time I was a little peeved I didn’t get a plus one is because I was in the bridal party, shelled out over $1K (in 2018 dollars) for this wedding, and it was a friend from childhood who had moved away, so I truly knew no one.

    I think if a friend is spending that much (costs included bachelorette parties, bridal parties, presents, dress, hair, makeup, hotels for all events) you should bend the rules of “plus ones for long term relationships only.” Bridal parties should be able to bring a date, no?

    A little off topic, but modern weddings have gotten out of control. I just heard that of a friend of a friend hired an engagement coordinator which was then followed by a party at a rented out brewery, all paid for by the guests of honor. Again, for an ENGAGEMENT!

    1. Lily Rowan*

      I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but if the date doesn’t know a lot of other people at the wedding, they will have a terrible time, given that the bridal party has obligations! (My closest experience to this was going to a friend’s wedding alone where all of my mutual friends were in the wedding party and I was not — I had a lot of awkward time to kill!)

      1. polly*

        That is true…I guess I was thinking a little selfishly. Though I still maintain that if I spent a thousand dollars on your day – thanks to modern obligations – I think its only fair to allow me a date to dance with!

        Going back to the letter, when I asked for a plus one and was denied because of the same reasons LW gave (not being in a long standing relationship) I respected the bride/my friend’s response.

      2. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

        Yeah, this is why I didn’t bring my husband along to my friends’ weddings (even though he was invited!) when I was in their bridal parties. I had too much stuff to worry about helping my friends with!

    2. Bruce*

      I like to pat myself on the back that both of my weddings were done a budget: my first wedding (to my late first wife) was more of a big event, but one venue, not huge, and carefully budgeted (We paid for it ourselves, other than my parents hosting the rehearsal dinner). My second wedding was done on a shoestring with a smaller invite list, a very cheap (but lovely!) venue, a lot of help from family setting up and taking down, and streamlined catering. (It helps when you have adult children you can ask to set up tables)… Saved money for the honeymoon! I’ve read there is a sad correlation between overspending on the wedding and an early break up, though happily many people I know have hosted a banger of a wedding party without bankrupting themselves.

    3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      Not really. Usually the bridal party is sitting at the head table, so your plus one would be sitting at a table by themselves.

      1. Megan Thee Scallion*

        IME, dates sit with the bridal party, even if they’re not in it. Some couples opt for sweetheart tables (where they sit by themselves).

        1. Jenesis*

          Husband and I opted for the sweetheart table, and sat the bridal party at regular tables. This way, the two friends on my side who didn’t get along with each other got to sit at opposite ends of the room, and my husband’s brother got to sit with his girlfriend and cousin instead of a bunch of people ~10 years older than him who he’d never met before.

    4. Strive to Excel*

      I wonder how much of the ‘modern weddings have gotten out of control’ trend stems from the idea that people need an excuse to throw a big party. Or feel like they need an excuse anyways. We should normalize just throwing balls again.

    5. samwise*

      No, sorry, can’t agree with you here. And I’ve been in exactly this position. It’s a wedding, not a date or a vacation. Guests are invited to witness the ceremony and/or celebrate the marriage at a reception/rehearsal dinner/next day brunch/etc. A couple of hours –or even a whole day or even a couple of days — where you have to entertain your own self in down time, or where you have to socialize with people you don’t know? It’s not going to kill you.

      If you’re not up for that, or it’s too much money, decline being in the wedding party.

      The engagement party: haha, well, those folks were mighty generous. And if they didn’t like it, they could always have said no.

      1. wondermint*

        No, it didn’t kill me.

        I wish I had declined! It was my first time going to a wedding as an adult, and certainly the first time being in a bridal party. I was very underprepared for the costs associated with being a bridesmaid.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          Yeah, you only make that mistake once (Even the couple planning it seems to learn; it’s less common to make big asks of the wedding party when it’s a second marriage or they’re older and have been in bridal parties themselves). I had a friend who pulled out of being a bridesmaid when she realised the dress wasn’t going to be paid for; “Sorry, I’ve never done this before and didn’t realise, but I’m way too broke for this. I’ll just come to your wedding in a dress I already own.” I thought that was strong!

          1. N C Kiddle*

            It might be because I’m currently reading Busman’s Honeymoon, where Harriet’s bridesmaids just show up in their best clothes even though they don’t match, but making the bridesmaids pay for a dress of the bride’s choosing just seems like the worst possible way to handle it. Is there a deep traditional reason it’s done that way?

            1. Seeking Second Childhood*

              I baffled my sister & friend by saying just pick something blue you’ll wear again. They decided we’d go to a department store together so they could pick something that matched. (And the sale rack turned up same thing in 2 sizes for under $100–score!)

    6. mm*

      do you really think that weddings were not lavish and expensive during the Reagan era or during the postwar 1950s? Or even in the 2000s? Where is this coming from that weddings are JUST NOW so over the top? Maybe when you were a kid you didn’t notice how weddings were always lavish and engagement parties were always a thing.

      1. LL*

        yeah and just because the dollar price of weddings is higher now (which I assume it is) doesn’t mean past weddings were inexpensive. Inflation is a thing and people definitely had expensive weddings relative to the cost of everything else in the past!

        1. VintageLydia*

          It seems like more people are having destination bachelor/bachelorette parties than before (especially in places like Nashville or Vegas) which seems to require themed single-use outfits and expensive travel costs and extra activities to pitch in for than before. The weddings themselves may not be more expensive but there are more extras for the bridal (and occasionally groom’s) party to cough up for.

      2. wondermint*

        I’m not trying to make blanket assumptions about all weddings. I wasn’t alive during Reagan area, but I can of course imagine that there have always been weddings that always been extravagant, across generations.

        However, it is true that there are some aspects around some weddings that have ballooned. Take, for instance, the bachelorette party. What was once a night on the town has exploded into multi-day affairs complete with airplane travel. Funnily enough, this expectation of the modern bachelorette party correlates with the first airing of MTV’s Spring Break.

        It’s also not unusual for today’s brides to have dress changes during weddings. A separate dress for ceremony, reception, after party. Seems extravagant, but one day may be sold to brides as simply “tradition” – the way it always was.

        Weddings used to be completely home-grown celebrations; in a family member’s backyard, in a dress the bride had worn once and would worn again. In fact, the white dress was popularized when Queen Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert. It wasn’t until some years later when the couple posed for reenactment photos (once the technology was developed) that the trend of the white dress, a symbol of purity and status (those who can wear white clearly don’t have dirty chores to attend to) became the go-to for brides.

        So, no. I don’t think my generation is the only one who has seen luxurious weddings. But, like the example of the dress changes and the huge engagement parties, I can see the wedding industrial complex continue to grow.

        1. wayland flowers puppet*

          for someone who has been complaining about weddings across this post, you seem to know quite a lot about them…

          2. wondermint*

            ? Weddings in my area cost, on average, $60k. I’m in a serious relationship and a wedding is something my partner and I have been considering, so I don’t mind doing research into something that could cost me as much as an SUV would. Beyond that, yea, I find the topic and history fascinating.

            I’ll make this clear: If you want to have a wedding, you absolutely should. They’re joyous, special occasions.

        2. Ellis Bell*

          Okay, but Elizabeth Taylor was buying an entire wardrobe worth of clothes or “a trousseau” in Father of the Bride (1950), and her father tries to explain to her that weddings used to be simpler, (every generation’s battle cry) and “trousseau” used to just be a simple french farmgirl’s bundle taken to your new home. Not according to Mrs Bennett, in Pride and Prejudice it isn’t. Then you’ve got the antebellum weddings, or the “second day dress” Scarlet O’Hara wore and I think there were a bunch of those. (Personally, having worn a traditional wedding dress on a hot day, I think it’s better to spring for a more modern and comfortable dress to change into on the same day rather than a second big dress, but that’s the advantage of modern clothing choices). That’s before we even go into things like dowries. People may have spent money on different types of things, but weddings have always been an opportunity for some people to signal what they can/can’t afford.

        3. Lady Danbury*

          Even backyard weddings can add up nowadays, unless you’re doing it picnic/potluck style or keeping it super small. A bunch of family members have had their weddings and/or reception at my parent’s house and the costs of catering, rentals (chairs, tables, linens, etc), dj, flowers, etc. can get pricey. Even a “simple” at home wedding can easily reach 5 figures.

          1. Jenesis*

            Husband and I invited only 20 people, aggressively cut costs as much as possible, and our wedding still cost about $3,500, with 1/3rd of that going toward feeding everyone.

            I shudder to think of how expensive it would have been if we’d invited everyone our families wanted us to invite.

        4. allathian*

          I have a copy of my paternal grandmother’s parents’ wedding photo from the early 1900s. The bride wore the same Sunday dress that she wore to church every Sunday, and it was (grayish) black for practical reasons. At the time, people used accessories to show what type of event it was, such as a colorful shawl for a wedding or a black one for a funeral. She also wore a bridal crown owned by the church, a tradition that died out only a few years later with World War I.

          I think that the biggest difference is that in previous generations, only the upper classes could afford truly luxurious weddings, but now it’s become more of an expectation for a larger segment of the population to go into debt to be able to pay for a fancy wedding.

      3. Pescadero*

        The average wedding in the 1920’s cost about $5,000 in 2023 dollars.
        The average wedding in the USA in 2023 was just under $30,000.

        The average wedding cost has outpaced inflation by 6x in the last 100 years.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          That’s hardly surprising when you consider people couldn’t just cohabitate in the 1920s. If you wanted to have sex, live with someone, or just move out of your parents house you needed a cheap wedding pretty much as soon as you got your first job, that could get you into your first home quickly. Double quick if you were pregnant.

      4. Former Admin Turned PM*

        When I got married almost 30 years ago (in what we jokingly referred to as the Wedding of the Month club because of how many couples in our circle got married within an 18 month span), there was some fancy stuff. But the weddings I’ve attended in the past few years have escalated- bachelor/bachelorette party weekends out of town instead of a night, multiple themed showers with fancy favors (not just the scented candle or Jordan almonds), custom themed cocktails at the reception…we spent a lot on weddings in the 90s as compared to typical life costs, but weddings seem to be much more elaborate in recent years that what I remember from childhood and early adulthood.

  13. CityMouse*

    I was my husband’s plus one to his childhood friend’s wedding where he was a groomsman. I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t in the wedding party (who was separated most of the timel and it was totally fine. I made smalltalk with some cousins.

  14. Quinalla*

    Wedding drama is so weird! OP I think you handled it well, I like Alison’s suggestions, but you did great. Glad you held firm!

    We had no drama at my wedding either, but we did a lot of prep to make sure we wouldn’t have any. Everything wasn’t perfect of course, but it was fun and lovely and folks generally had a great time. I am always amazed the entitlement of some guests, some brides, etc. when I read stories about weddings. I get cultural differences, I really do, and some stems from that for sure, but when your cultural tradition is butting heads with someone else, you need to take a step back and come to a compromise which with a wedding usually means you either get with the program of what the bride & groom have said or you don’t attend. It’s not that difficult :)

  15. ThatGirl*

    I don’t understand why you would want to go to a wedding you would be “bored” at anyway. Weddings are great if you know and love the couple involved; if you don’t, even with a +1 why would you want to bother getting dressed up and spend money on a gift etc.

    (I know sometimes there are social obligations involved, but in general, nobody is MAKING you go.)

    I did once bring my mom as a +1 to a wedding instead of my husband, but it was for an old friend from HS who my mom knew well and my husband had never met, and she was way more interested in going than he was. Plus I cleared it with the bride first.

      3. ItWasMyWedding*

        LW here-

        Now that I think about it, no. She didn’t give a gift (unknown if she would’ve if her sister was allowed to attend).

    2. Smithy*

      I will say – when I was younger/newer to the work world, getting a wedding invitation in that kind of a situation at work would have been a bit stressful. Because I would have felt obligated to go, get a gift, and likely be bored.

      I was new to an office (outside of the US, with me as an American), where the custom of inviting the whole office made me really nervous at first on the etiquette of what I was supposed to do. I eventually figured out, and it was very acceptable to just not go and not get a gift. But the initial panic of both the cost, the desire to not be there, but also the feeling like I had to say yes was quite high.

      That being said, I do think that a) the OP took the right approach given the size of the office and b) if I was Gerturde’s friend/sister I would have recommended RSVPing no and giving a $25/35 gift from the registry.

  16. MistOrMister*

    This is so odd to me!! I think when Gertrude pushed back saying she needed her sister so as not to be bored that I would have jumped at the chance to tell her I couldn’t give her a plus one so would put her down as a no. Why she even went to the wedding after arguing about her lack of plus one for however long is beyond me. The utter nerve of someone altering the invitation to include the plus one they’ve decided they are entitled to is astounding!

    1. Wolf*

      So her reply was basically “Your party is going to be boring unless I bring my own entertainment”? What a glassbowl.

  17. Observer*

    so maybe inviting sisters is a thing in other cultures?

    Maybe yes, maybe no. But not really relevant. Because I don’t think there is a culture in which it is ok to invite someone to an event with specific headcount / invitations, if you are not the host / person making the event.

    Like in current US culture, where spouses and SOs are typically invited, you don’t get to invite your spouse to someone else’s wedding. You can decide to go without your spouse or skip the event. *Maybe* you can *ask* about bringing your spouse. But that’s it. You do *not* get to just decide to bring them.

    1. allathian*

      The same thing is true in Finland.

      That said, I think that inviting the friends of your parents is a bit odd. Fine if you still run into them occasionally when your parents are hosting social events for both friends and family, but if you haven’t seen them since your high school graduation (typically the last party parents organize and host on behalf of their children here), it’s equally fine not to invite them.

      Here the *median* age for women at first (heterosexual) marriage is 30, for men it’s 32.5. The vast majority have lived together before getting married and have been working for several years if not a decade or more. This means that the norm is for the bride and groom to pay for the wedding themselves, and thus retain total control of the guest list. To me, the idea of inviting someone whose primary contact within the family is someone other than the bride or groom is absurd.

  18. Mouse named Anon*

    My husband and I got married in 2008. We married right out of college and thus we invited many friends. We decided on the same rules as OP. If we let everyone of our college buddies bring a plus one, we would have 20-30 extra guests. We just couldn’t swing it!

  20. H.Regalis*

    Regardless of what’s expected/normal/whatever, you told her no repeatedly. This was not a wedding where plus-ones were allowed. She can feel however she wants to about that, but she doesn’t get to invite guests to someone else’s wedding. She was a jerk and there wasn’t anything you could have done to head that off unless you could possess her and steer her around like a puppet.

  21. HannahS*

    I get the social convention. I do think it’s kind to extend a plus-one for guests who really won’t know anyone (like a childhood friend who is flying in from another city and doesn’t know the other guests,) but that doesn’t apply in this situation, and even if it did, Gertrude was being very, very odd. I think most people are aware that not everyone does weddings the same way. It’s kind of ignorant to stamp your feet and go, “but all the weddings I’VE ever been to had XYZ!” People all around the world have been getting married for thousands of years; you’d think some variation in practice would be expected!

    When faced with an invitation that I don’t like, I go, “Huh, interesting.” And then I decide whether to go or not. And then I issue wild and sometimes petty judgements–and this is key–in the privacy of my own head or shared with my husband. I do not hassle the happy couple. I send a polite note and token gift. I get the sense that Gertrude was a bit of a drama-llama.

      2. kiki*

        Yeah, I would get if Gertrude complained endlessly about not getting a plus one to her friends, family, and anonymous corners of the internet, but there’s no reason to bring this up to the bride. If the conditions under which you were invited upset you or make you not want to attend, just don’t go!

    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      People all around the world have been getting married for thousands of years; you’d think some variation in practice would be expected!

      Yeah, this! And the fact that Gertrude doesn’t understand this totally tracks with the fact that she also seemed to think she was the main character in a movie and everyone else was merely a supporting character or NPC.

  23. Down the Witches' Road*

    The cloddish Gertrudes of the world need firm boundaries or they’ll continue to bother us all with their clueless bullshit. Being a socially awkward dolt should mean more pushback – not less!

  24. HonorBox*

    Gertrude was awful in this situation. Asking if she could bring a plus one would have been OK, but as soon as she was told no, that should have been the end of it. Weddings can be wildly entertaining, often for reasons beyond celebrating the couple, dancing, and enjoying good food. If someone’s reason for bringing a plus one is so they’re not bored, they should choose not to attend and find something more entertaining. This brings to mind the old saying that my parents once deployed on me and my brother: “Only boring people are bored.”

    1. Jordan*

      We got the “only boring people are bored” line as well.
      And the other side of the family chimed in with “if you are bored, it’s because you are not doing something you are supposed to be doing “

      That side had zero concept of self-care, but I’ll admit I am reading this instead of doing several things I am supposed to be doing…

      Still I could have easily entrained myself counting ceiling tiles or observing my surroundings. If I don’t feel comfortable on my own, there are Always other things to do elsewhere.

      -I’m also wondering, did she follow the convention of bringing a gift? Or was it all for her personal entertainment

    2. amoeba*

      Oh, I’ve definitely been to boring weddings! If you’re not part of the inner circle/don’t know the family and close friends of the couple, I’d say it’s pretty common, honestly. All the little inside jokes, people who haven’t seen each other in years, etc., while you’re stuck on the “various other people” table and trying to make polite small talk to people you might or might not find enjoyable… then speeches by people you don’t know, a lot of memories you don’t share, etc. The party part is mostly fine again, but dinner/pre dinner reception can really be quite excruciating, and I was always really happy to have a plus one there so I knew at least one person!

      However, that doesn’t really apply to Gertrude, who was sat at a table with her colleagues, anyway…

  25. LCH*

    “Gertrude: Well, I want someone I’m close to to talk to.”

    she really missed that this wedding wasn’t about her.

  26. Lucy*

    Eh. Gertrude was extremely out of line. You can never ask for a plus one. You get one or you don’t. That said, as a perpetually single person who tends to cherry pick close friends based on interests and general clicking (I like to avoid big group drama and stick with people I truly enjoy!), I wish we *could* change the plus one rules to include someone for the singleton who doesn’t know anyone to hang out with. I’ve been to a few weddings where I’ve known no one but the bride, and they were lovely because I loved the bride, but I won’t pretend I didn’t have a fair few socially anxious, sleepless nights about how much of an awkward loner I was going to look, and how I could keep the bride from feeling she had to take time from her day to “look after” me (a thing I have genuinely seen happen with other guests who appear lost, though I’ve never been one of them). It would be amazing to just… Drag along a close friend to sit with at dinner, who could help to smooth along the conversation with strangers, the way couples do for each other.

    All that said though, that’s something I think would be nice, not something I expect, much less demand! And Gertrude was so incredibly out of line and entitled, I don’t know how she was functioning in society. I guess I think, it’s not weird that she wanted to invite her sister. Maybe even to politely ask (though it can be so awkward to refuse, so I would never do that). But anything beyond that is outrageous.

    Also, she *did* have the other coworkers to talk to – unless they were *all* coupled up? I must admit, if inviting coworkers to your wedding, I also don’t think it’s especially weird to just invite your coworker, married or not, if the expectation is that they’ll all be in a group together. Coworker is a specific type of relationship – with your family and friends, you tend to know their partners, at least a little. Who wants total strangers at their wedding anyway?

    1. Bookworm*

      As another perpetually single person, I don’t go to weddings anymore unless they are very close friends. It’s just gotten too expensive and the reception music is so loud that you can’t have a conversation with anyone. When some people have told me they can’t invite me because of needing space for large families, I tell them to not worry about it and I can’t wait to see photos.

    2. A Simple Narwhal*

      That’s what we did at our wedding! We took extra care to seat people we thought would get along well at tables (if their group didn’t fill out a full table) and made sure that anyone who wasn’t in a relationship was absolutely grouped with their friends. Anyone who didn’t have a partner and didn’t have a group to sit with was given a +1 so they had someone to sit and talk with. I think it ended up being only one or two people who fit that bill but we wanted to make sure that everyone would have a good time and people to talk to.

      2. Lucy*

        Same here. For one of the weddings I mention here, though, I was actually a bridesmaid! From a completely different part of the bride’s life than the large group of other bridesmaids who were all from her swimming club. It’s not exactly a bad thing. I love my friends and I love that they value me enough to want me to be there for them on an important day. But it’s true that it really really helps if people do try to do something to help, like matching you with table mates by interest, or offering a plus one and being clear it’s not a requirement that it be a “date”.

        Still, weddings seem so hard and stressful and difficult to organise – and it’s not about me! I do get that. It’s hard to balance knowing I’m definitely not entitled to anything like this, with also knowing how hard it can be to show up for your friends without it!

        It was really kind of you to do that for your guests! I know that one of my friends took care to seat me with people I may have encountered back when we first met (we were at college together – again, in different circles – but close enough to know each others names). That was really lovely of her and I suspect she may have mentioned to one or two of them to maybe try and keep a me company a bit!

        At another, for the bachelorette party, we all paired up for the rooms, and I was paired up with the bride – not because I was her closest friend, though we are very close, but I think because the bride looked at the group and thought, “they all know each other, but Lucy only knows me”. It really is little things like that that make a massive difference.

    3. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      “Also, she *did* have the other coworkers to talk to – unless they were *all* coupled up?”

      Who knows, maybe they were coupled up. I was once invited to a co-worker’s wedding, along with several other co-workers and the owners of the company. With the exception of one female co-worker and myself, everyone else was part of a couple. My female co-worker was invited to bring a plus-one, so she brought a female friend. I was not invited to bring a plus-one. The female friend was delighted to attend the wedding of someone that she didn’t know, because it meant a free fancy dinner and open bar. FWIW I was the only co-worker who went to the actual wedding ceremony. Everyone else, including the owners, went only to the reception.

      At the reception, I saw a guy at a nearby table who appeared to be by himself and who was enjoying the music. I said to myself that as soon as the band played a fast dance, I was going to ask him to dance. It never happened – every single dance was a slow dance, and I was not going to ask a stranger to slow-dance with me. Afterwards, my single female co-worker complained to me about all of the dances being slow dances. I agreed with her, but I said that it was what the bridal couple wanted, and it was their wedding. “Weddings are for everyone,” she said. I don’t know about that.

      1. amoeba*

        Eh, depends on which aspect, but for the music I’m definitely with your co-worker here – the party and dancing are for the guests to enjoy! And while I’d never play music that I actively dislike, I feel like “guests having fun on the dancefloor” is the main goal here, not “playing my favourite Finnish Death Metal exclusively”.

    4. I&I*

      Eh, even if they were coupled up she could still have talked to them. I’ve been the plus-one spouse at co-worker weddings, and if my spouse had ignored their co-workers and only talked to me I would have had two thoughts:

      1. You’re being weird and rude to your colleagues, what’s up with that?

      2. If this was just a date, we could have gone somewhere of our own choosing in more comfortable shoes.

      I mean, Gertrude seems to have the idea that people only ever talk to their plus-ones, but that’s not how it usually plays out!

      1. allathian*

        Indeed!

        There are even some cultures where couples are lucky to be seated at the same table. Swedish upper class events, including weddings, usually follow this. The idea is that you get to talk to your spouse every day, here’s a chance to talk to others.

  27. Jess R.*

    I too had a very small wedding and was a little disappointed I didn’t get a good story out of it. (Although my cat did proudly and cheerfully poop in front of all my guests while making intense eye contact with some of them, since the reception was in our living room, so there’s that.)

    But LW, you were clear on the invitation, politely clarified in person, and stood firm about your guest list. You nailed it, both in terms of general etiquette and work/office-specific etiquette. This mess is all on Gertrude.

      1. allathian*

        Indeed, the cat poop story got a giggle out of me.

        Our wedding was similar. I was 8 months pregnant at the time, we got married at city hall and the reception was in our living room. We’d only invited our families of origin (parents and one sister each) and my MIL’s then-fiance, now husband, and my FIL’s wife. FIL’s wife didn’t come at all and FIL only came to the reception, and there was no drama because my MIL and FIL are decent people, as is my MIL’s husband. Both FIL and MIL’s husband are retired engineers, and it was hilarious to watch them making small talk about work stuff when both of them had been retired for at least 10 years by then! But all of us were rather relieved that my FIL’s wife declined the invitation because she apparently still resents the fact that FIL had a family before her, in spite of the fact that she also has kids and grandkids from her first marriage.

  28. CubeFarmer*

    Hopefully, GertRUDE has looked back on this situation and cringed, and continues to cringe every time the memory pops into her brain.

    Wonder where she is now….

  29. Anonymous Educator*

    People are so strange about weddings and feeling like they can skirt the rules/etiquette …. We had a similar setup at our wedding – we had a very small venue, so the only plus-ones were spouses and long-term partners. We also excluded cousins under the age of 20 (I had over 20 at the time!) and kids. Unfortunately, two people brought plus-ones who shouldn’t have (without acknowledging this prior to the wedding). One person went on the hunt for extra chairs from another reception going on in the same building (!) and shoehorned their guest into their table. The other one sat at our parent’s table (instead of the “friend” table in the back where there wasn’t room for the plus-one), displacing my close uncle and aunt who were supposed to be there (they even switched the table numbers on my aunt and uncles nameplates…). Thankfully, the “friend” and girlfriend were told to move. Lastly, I had an uncle who was mad that his 16 year old daughter wasn’t included so he decided to send her with my aunt and he stayed home after sending nasty messages to me and my family. He was told no, but they showed up anyway……

      1. Anonymous Educator*

        To be fair, they were except for the friends who kicked my aunt and uncle from their table, so I suppose overall, well behaved.

    2. Future*

      That poor sixteen-year-old. Who wants to be at a wedding where you’re the only one your age as a teenager?

  30. A large cage of birds*

    Not a co-worker but I had someone do this too! She was very clearly not given a plus one, but aske me if her boyfriend could come. (Boyfriend of a few weeks, and I had never met him.) i said no, as I have a large family and we were in danger of going over the number of people that the venue could easily accommodate. I told her this and then she sent in her official RSVP with a plus one. I ended up letting him come because the numbers worked out, but it’s so rude to do that.

    (She has since married that boyfriend and we’re no longer friends)

  31. Unkempt Flatware*

    Would it be a more polite or less polite society if we started normalizing saying things like, “no you can’t have a plus one and it’s not appropriate that you asked”?

    1. Abigail*

      My opinion: you can say that to people as long as you can accept other people saying it to you.

      What happens most of the time is that people love love LOVE to dole out this kind of thing but absolutely refuse to take it from others. It’s not about being polite, it’s about being right.

    2. Down the Witches' Road*

      I really can’t wait for when it’s more socially acceptable to push back against the oblivious. You being a clod is not my fking problem!

    3. Joana*

      I’m not expert on wedding etiquette, but some people have said it’s fine to ASK, where Gertrude crossed the line was that she kept asking and then bullied her way through with it despite being repeatedly told no. So maybe more “No you can’t have a plus one, and it’s inappropriate that you keep asking.”

  32. misty*

    Weddings cause weird, weird drama.
    I got married last year. Almost as soon as I got engaged, two assistants started constantly lamenting about how awful their marriages had been. They were both divorced decades before, but they started raging about their terrible ex-husbands in every single conversation. I figured my engagement was triggering for them, so I basically brushed it off and *never* brought up my wedding around them.
    Well, unbeknownst to me, my engagement was *so* triggering that they framed me for a mistake I didn’t make, went to HR and tried to have me fired. Shockingly, this didn’t work. I was so beyond upset, super stressed planning a wedding, and now two people try to get me fired out of nowhere?! In talking to my boss, she indicated that this only started after I got engaged, and that both assistants seemed fixated on my wedding and marriage, making comments about how I shouldn’t get special treatment “just because she’s young and pretty and engaged.” So, my only logical conclusion is that these women had never actually come to terms with their divorces, and took out their pent-up anger on me. It was awful, and honestly, they never faced substantial repercussions from it, so I started job-hunting not long after the wedding. So happy I got out of that toxic situation. Weddings can be weird.

  33. Buni*

    Everything I know about US weddings I’ve learnt from films and sitcoms, where it seems you can’t POSSIBLY go stag (doe…?) and positively MUST find a plus one, so shenanigans ensue. Maybe Gert-rude saw too many bad films too…?

    1. MsM*

      Well, but if you’ve seen the films, you know you don’t just take a relative. You hire some rando to pose as your significant other and then proceed to fall in love with them.

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      Yes, and one of their coworkers couldn’t find a date, either, so he brings his brother. Over the table Gertrude’s eyes meet the brother’s, and the sister’s eyes meet the coworkers, and it’s True Love at First Sight.

      And the film ends with a lavish double wedding… with a cut to LW sitting morosely by herself because she wasn’t allowed a plus one.

    3. Bee*

      It’s incredibly funny that the two tropes about US weddings are at such odds: there’s NO WAY you could POSSIBLY go alone, how embarrassing, but also everyone is constantly hooking up with strangers at weddings, that’s the whole point of going. It’s like Schrodinger’s Date.

  34. L-squared*

    This seems awful to me.

    At the same time, based on what I’ve read on sites like AITA, its really not as uncommon as it should be for people to think they MUST have a plus one so they have someone to keep them company.

    Somehow the plus one has gone from a nice thing to do for people to an expectation.

  35. LL*

    I know it would be awkward and weird, but I most likely wouldn’t have invited her. Life’s too short to invite people to your wedding that you don’t like

  36. Jules*

    First off I firmly believe that Gertrude was in the wrong here, like beyond rude. That said, even in the US, Wedding rules are very different depending on how/where you grew up. So I don’t think there is a hard and fast line of “Of course she doesn’t get a plus one”. I understand the not wanting to spend the money on people you don’t know, but I also understand where I grew up/my family it would be very rude not to give someone the option regardless of how many people the guest knows in attendance. I didn’t realize how much “hard and fast” wedding etiquette rules really differ across the US until recently. But never is it OK to do what Gertrude did here.

    1. Clisby*

      It’s not necessarily “not wanting to spend the money on people you don’t know” – a lot of people want their wedding celebration to involve people they *do* know, and not random strangers.

      1. Jenesis*

        I would have rather not had a wedding at all than a giant party full of people I didn’t know!*

        The only “random stranger plus one” Husband and I invited to our 20 person micro wedding was 1) married 2) to a member of the bridal party 3) who didn’t know anyone there besides the bride. I would rather not have, but I felt it would be unspeakably rude not to. As it turned out, they ended up not coming anyway.

        *The wedding itself turned out more or less how we wanted. What happened afterward was… a different story.

    2. doreen*

      I think the hard and fast rule is “Of course she doesn’t bring a plus one if it’s not mentioned on the invitation”.

      It’s often not a matter of not wanting to pay for people you don’t know , or even wanting to celebrate with only people you know. Sometimes, it’s a matter of “If I give everyone who is not in a relationship a plus-one , that will be thirty more people than I can afford/fit. Who am I going to cut out to accommodate inviting thirty people I don’t know? Do I cut out the great-aunts and uncles? My mother’s friends who have known me since I as a child?

  37. Juicebox Hero*

    Speaking for the unwillingly dragged-along sisters of the world, thank you times a million for not letting Gertrude drag her sister along to be yammered at for four straight hours in a room full of people she didn’t know.

    One of my sisters can’t stand to be without an audience, and if my brother in law isn’t available she tries to hook me.

  38. Elsa*

    I love Alison’s suggestion to cherish the drama. Our wedding was big so we basically shrugged and accepted some of the weird additions, like my parents’ friends who announced that they would be bringing along their nine year old son, or my husband’s sister who wanted to bring a plus one but wasn’t dating anyone so she brought a random female friend who we never saw before or after the wedding. At the wedding we were kind of annoyed when the nine year old kept walking off with the wedding decorations or when the random friend kept jumping into *all* the photos, but they do make funny stories afterwards!

    1. A Simple Narwhal*

      Agree to cherish the drama! I remember planning my seating arrangements and jokingly asked my mother if there were any family members I shouldn’t seat together, and she casually dropped that two of her brothers hate each other now and should be at separate tables. I was completely shocked (I had zero idea there was beef between them) but just had to laugh at it and seat them accordingly.

      I’ve read enough horror stories about family drama at weddings to appreciate that two uncles quietly hating each other is barely worth thinking about. Nor is another uncle changing into jeans after the ceremony.

    2. Clisby*

      A different type of drama, but for years, at any wedding we attended, my sister and I desperately hoped for a Jane Eyre-like disruption when the minister asked whether anyone knew a reason these people should not be married. We had nothing against the wedding couples, we just wanted the drama.

      1. N C Kiddle*

        When my mum married my stepdad (I was about 12) I considered making a scene at that point, but I was just intelligent enough to realise it wouldn’t have stopped them getting married and would only have put me into Deep Disgrace. So I just sat and cried instead. I had nothing against my stepdad but I still wasn’t over my parents’ divorce.

    3. Seeking Second Childhood*

      My ~9yo niece wanted to be helpful so she was given a bag to collect cards people gave us. Unfortunately we did not specifically explain that we meant loose cards only, and she carefully gathered even the cards taped to boxes….

  39. learnedthehardway*

    Gertrude was indescribably rude!!

    When I got married, we were on a serious budget – we paid for everything ourselves. My gesture to coworkers was to invite them to the dance and cake part of the reception, and to let them know that there was a limited open bar (everyone got a few drinks, but after that had to buy their own). That was as much as we could afford, and I think my team understood that.

    About 6 people from the team showed up and it was lovely to have them there.

  41. Wallaby, Well I'll Be*

    I’ve seen the issue of whether or not to invite all of your work teammates to your wedding come up here several times now, and the consensus seems to be “You have to invite everyone,” and I’m going to push back on that. You don’t have to invite everyone. This isn’t like inviting your coworkers to your Halloween party, this is a massively expensive and emotionally intimate event that you might only have one chance at in life. But let me narrow that down: This is a MASSIVELY EXPENSIVE event. Yeah, not inviting that one coworker might make things awkward at work, but I prefer awkward to additional debt. I promise everyone reading this that you are free to not invite all of your coworkers to your wedding. You can leave out that one awful person.

    1. Rosie*

      Can we all agree to the standardized definition that as a Coworker Invite, we ARE the Courtesy Invite?
      I’ve worked in lovely places, have been tremendously fond of coworkers, have genuinely wanted them to be part of my life…but they are few and far between and as the ten million posts on this blog would suggest, coworkers are not your nearest and dearest. As this is ostensibly a business blog, perhaps we can all agree by consensus of common civility to recognize that an invitation to a wedding from a coworker is different than your brother’s wedding invites. Don’t bring your whole family. Don’t bring a casual plus one. Enjoy the festivities, but sit at the table dedicated to coworkers and don’t wear out your welcome at the bar. If you’re a coworker, you’re a courtesy invitation—it’s not a free party! So please, fellow humans of AAM, let us band together to respect the unspoken boundaries of coworker wedding invites.
      (Just as an aside, as a recent bride: plated meals and a seating chart are more expensive but have less waste, so it’s not necessarily about brides being grandiose—I was trying to be conscientious and the pounds of potential food waste from a buffet or totally open invites were horrifying to me).
      I had one coworker who invited all four of their children, so I had two tables of coworkers and then a third table that was basically her family—an entire extra table (!). I had another who told me that she and her husband really didn’t care about the ceremony, they were just interested in the meals and drinks, which was equally appalling and hilarious in retrospect.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        >plated meals
        Interesting — my friends with the restaurant charged more for catering a buffet because of the extra food that keeps things from running out.

    2. Sparkles McFadden*

      I think the majority of the wedding-related AAM letters are of the “How can I exclude that one person?” ilk. There isn’t much drama if you’re inviting only one or two coworkers and not just excluding one person.

      I think the “you must invite everyone at work” mentality came about because people would hand out invitations at work (old school) or send e-vites using everyone’s work e-mail address. In those situations, it becomes very apparent that one or two people didn’t get invited. Even if people’s home addresses and personal e-mail addresses get used, it’s likely that someone is going to say something, as in “What are you wearing to the wedding?” If a workplace or department is very small, it does get very awkward. That doesn’t mean you *must* invite someone like Gertrude. You just have to be prepared there may be weirdness that may impact your work life.

      I’m really impressed with how the LW handled the situation with grace and tact while standing firm.

    3. doreen*

      I don’t think the consensus is that you must invite everyone, I think the consensus is that you don’t leave one or two people out. Which might be the same thing if you are talking about 2 or 3 coworkers but you can absolutely invite 2 out of 10 coworkers – what I’ve usually seen is that less than half of any group ( co-workers, softball teammates, second cousins , whatever) is OK.

    4. allathian*

      You can, but that awful person is probably not going to be any less awful if you exclude them and invite everyone else. It would be better to invite only one or two of your closest teammates, without plus ones unless you’ve met their SOs, and let them represent the team.

      I know that the angst of organizing your wedding can take over and you’ll have little energy for anything else except that and work for a while, but don’t talk so much about your wedding at work that your teammates start expecting an invitation…

  42. ecnaseener*

    Ha, I love the “I needed to grow as a person” line — yeah hon, you sure did! I hope she grew in a good direction.

  43. Hansfel*

    Weddings can provoke very strange behavior.

    I was recently at a wedding where a guest called the night before to tell (tell!) the bride she’d be bringing her uninvited daughter because the guest wanted to be able to leave early without pulling her husband away from the festivities. When the bride said sorry, the wedding is in less than 24 hours and we don’t have last minute capacity, the guest responded that she was going to do it anyway.

    Apparently, the guest DID bring her daughter but made the mistake of telling the daughter (in the parking lot) that her presence hadn’t been approved. The daughter then drove away, presumably mortified, and did not return. The guest did what she should have done in the first place, and called a cab when she was ready to go home.

    1. Seeking Second Childhood*

      Good on the daughter–I hope she wore her party dress out someplace else and had a blast.

  44. Frosty*

    I’m going to be in the minority here and say that everyone should include a plus one and it should not be contingent on if they have been dating a long time or whatever. Do we do check ups on marriages like “oh you can only come if you guys don’t get divorced in the next year”?

    It can be very lonely attending a wedding where everyone else has “someone” and you sit alone (even if you want to pretend that they will have other people to talk to). It doesn’t have to be a romantic partner, but a close friend etc. Everyone needs someone to whisper to or roll their eyes to, or smile with, to get up on the dance floor with etc.

    If you can’t afford to have all people have plus one, then invite fewer people and let them all include them.

    1. Frosty*

      I’m not sure why you would invite Gertrude in the first place if you didn’t like her, but then limit her in a way that will “other” her further. Don’t invite people you don’t like to your wedding.

      1. Bella Ridley*

        So people shouldn’t invite people they don’t like to their wedding, but they should invite people they don’t know to their wedding? Because that’s frequently what a +1 is, a stranger to the couple, and I don’t see many people opting for “wedding that’s half family and friends and half strangers or acquaintances” vice “wedding with family and friends, not all of whom can bring their partners.”

        1. Frosty*

          A stranger is just a friend you haven’t made yet. If you actively don’t like someone then don’t invite them! But if you have people you care about, you should care about them having fun and being comfortable. If they don’t want to bring a plus one they don’t have to, but the option should be there.

          1. Arrietty*

            By your logic, you don’t need a plus one because everyone at the wedding is about to become your friend.

          2. LadyVet*

            The couple getting married isn’t going to have time to make friends with the randos.

            It makes sense for them to want to spend their limited time and money on people they know.

    2. ecnaseener*

      Hard disagree. If the people getting married like big parties with plenty of new people to meet, then sure, giving everyone a plus-one is a great idea. But not everyone likes that kind of party. Some couples would much rather have the room filled with people who actually know and love them, with few to no strangers. It would really suck to have to exclude loved ones just to make space for plus-ones.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Bingo. I didn’t want anyone at my wedding that either my husband or I didn’t actually know and want to have there.

      2. Lady Danbury*

        This. Plus, the assumption that not having a plus one means you’ll be be lonely doesn’t match with my experience. I’ve been to plenty of weddings without a plus one (either because I was single or because my partner couldn’t make it), but I always had other friends/family/coworkers to hang out with and still had a good time. If I really felt like I would be awkward not knowing anyone (like the time my stylist invited me to her baby shower), I would simply RSVP no. Anyone who’s close enough that my presence at their wedding truly matters is someone who I’d know other people at the wedding anyway.

      3. Frosty*

        Ok well well everyone else in this comment section agrees with you so I’m not sure why you feel the need to refute my minority opinion. I would never attend a wedding that treated me as though I was lesser than someone that (for example) married some rando but they get to bring them.

        1. ecnaseener*

          I understand you’re feeling piled-on and I sympathize with that feeling, but I was literally the very first person to reply to you.

          Anyway. Not getting a plus-one isn’t being treated as lesser than anyone else! Not getting to bring your long-term partner just because you’re not married would be crappy, I agree, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

          Hope you’re feeling better with a few hours distance from this.

    3. Wallaby, Well I'll Be*

      A wedding is not your personal little fun time party day, it is someone else’s extraordinarily important milestone that they paid A LOT for. The couple getting married get to decide how this even will impact their finances, and if that includes not offering everybody +1’s, then that is perfectly acceptable. Do you think the money for these random +1’s just materializes because they ask the universe nicely for it? If you think you will be lonely at a wedding you’ve been invited to, you are free to RSVP “no.”

      1. Fíriel*

        This reply seems unnecessarily hostile. And also frankly inaccurate? I struggle to imagine someone throwing a party who thinks ‘I really do not care if anyone attending my party has a good time, it’s only about me’. And if they did think that, I’m not sure I’d like them very much! After all, if they didn’t care, why did they ask us to come?

        Also, if I liked someone enough to invite them to my wedding, I would want that specific person to have a good time at it. I would be sad if I found out my friends at my wedding were lonely or embarrassed about seeming alone. Part of the issue in this letter is that LW *doesn’t* like Gertrude to begin with, and so doesn’t actually want her at the wedding or care if she’s having a good time or not. In which case, she shouldn’t have been invited (or should have been politely pushed out once she chose to be a jerk about the +1 issue), and money can be spared!

        1. ItWasMyWedding*

          LW

          I didn’t dislike Gertrude. I didn’t want to spend of my limited seats on her.

          Of course I cared if people are having a good time! There was food and dancing and music and a table full of coworkers to talk to. But if Gertrude needed a plus one to be happy at my wedding, she shouldn’t come.

        2. Saturday*

          I don’t understand the assumption that the LW doesn’t care if some people aren’t having a good time. When people throw a party – they want people to have a good time!

          If a guest can’t enjoy herself if her sister isn’t there, well, that’s kind of odd, but that means the guest should probably just decline.

        3. Despachito*

          If Gertrude wasn’t invited, it would have created a weird dynamic because she would be the only coworker not invited. I think this was why LW invited her in the first place.

      2. Spooky*

        +1 to this ^^

        It’s not weird or rude to treat people who are in a serious relationship as though they get invitations together. It’s a social convention that makes sense. if you think you’ll be lonely at the wedding, either practice, making friendly conversation with strangers, or decline to go.

        It can be nice to talk in a friendly way to strangers when there’s such an obvious entry point to conversation as a wedding of someone, you both know. Even if you don’t end up ever seeing them again, if you put aside your baggage, it can be a perfectly nice time. And I’m an introvert, too, no one’s saying it would be your favorite choice of evening ever, but if it drains you for a couple hours, you can then go home and recoup. it’s not about you. There’s a difference between having preferences versus being allergic to even momentary discomfort for the sake of someone you supposedly care about.

        1. amoeba*

          “It’s a social convention that makes sense.”

          I mean… it’s certainly a social convention, sure, but I really don’t see it making a lot of sense (and actually find it quite discriminatory for a lot of people!)

          Like, I’m not going to be angry at anybody handling their wedding according to this convention, but it’s not, like, a natural law that long-term romantic relationships are superior to other relationships people have.

          1. LadyVet*

            But if someone is in a long-term relationship with someone the wedding couple knows, that person might be invited on their own.

            But really, wedding receptions are parties, and parties are a great way to meet other people the hosts know. If you’re absolutely sure you won’t know anyone and don’t like mingling, you can say no. In this case, Gertrude would have known her coworkers.

      3. Frosty*

        Everyone else in the comments agrees with you so I’m not sure why you want to have a conniption fit about someone having a different opinion. Why would I attend a wedding if I thought I’d have a bad time? Anyone I care about, that cares about me, will want me to have a good time in the same way I’d want them to have a good time at my wedding. It’s very weird to want to have a bunch of people come and witness your wedding and not care about their experience at all.

        1. basically functional*

          You shared a minority opinion, which is fine. But people do get to disagree with you. It’s disingenuous to act like that’s weird and it’s pretty rude to characterize it as a “conniption fit.”

      4. Pescadero*

        “it is someone else’s extraordinarily important milestone”

        …and I think this is part of the issue.

        Nowadays – people tend to think the wedding is about the bride and the groom.

        Historically – wedding were for bride, and groom, and both sets of parents, and their relatives, and the community as a whole.

        It was NOT all about the bride and groom – it was about the community as a whole.

          1. I&I*

            Because a community is shaped by the social bonds within it, one of the most significant social bonds is family, and a marriage creates a new family. Marriage is one of the ways communities form and re-form.

            Nowadays when we don’t all live in villages, a wedding is more likely to include a cross-section of a bunch of different communities who don’t usually interact, so the significance is less major. But it still applies to most of the wedding guests, ie the couple’s family and close friends. These people are still basically a community.

            Courtesy invites like Gertrude are on the fringes, which is why she might feel left out – but also why she’s perfectly free to decline if she doesn’t want to go.

            This is also a big part of why plus-ones tend to be couples, I think. There’s things to say about valuing romantic relationships over everything else, and I agree that if someone has, say, a platonic life partner, or an elderly parent they care for, or somebody else as major in their life as a spouse, then that person should be invited too.

            But the reason you invite plus-ones is not to entertain the guest. It’s primarily so as to minimise emotional disruption.

            Generally speaking your emotional life revolves around your partner, but if you work then you don’t actually get to see them for most of your waking hours. Weddings happen at weekends, and weekends is when you usually get to see your spouse; if it’s a long event then going without them means that you and your emotional-anchor-person don’t get to see each other enough during that week, when it’s very possible that working hours mean you already don’t see them as much as they’d like.

            Hence, inviting a plus-one is, to my mind, really about minimising the community *cost* of the wedding. It’s a way of saying, ‘If you come to my wedding, you don’t lose out on time with your Primary Person, and your Primary Person doesn’t lose out on time with you.’

            Having the Primary Person be extended beyond ‘spouse’ is quite reasonable – but there’s a difference between inviting someone because they’re an emotional anchor in someone’s life, and inviting someone who isn’t that just because the invitee doesn’t feel like talking to the other guests.

            1. allathian*

              Oh well, it could be worse. In times past, unmarried women and widows frequently didn’t get invited to social events like weddings at all because it was unthinkable for a woman to attend such an event unaccompanied by a man/her husband.

              And when a woman married, she joined her husband’s family and was often expected to treat her husband’s sisters better than her own.

          2. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

            Because the difference between two people who are married and two people who have simply been together for a long time is entirely in the privileges the community chooses to extend to them. Nowadays that mostly takes the form of legal rights to things like financial support and inheritance but in the old days it was also about whether you were in good standing religiously and how you (and your children, if any, and in some cases your entire extended family) would be treated socially – there’s a reason ‘bastard’ has hung around as an insult!

            Now I think this is a ridiculous system on the whole but it’s so thoroughly baked in that it’s transparent to most people in the Western world, which is one of the reasons why there’s so much disagreement about whether a wedding should be treated as a just a very fancy party or something with an extra, super serious set of rules to begin with.

  45. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

    People get so weird about weddings. I explicitly had a childfree wedding (no children or babies invited) and said that I totally understood if that meant people couldn’t attend.

    One woman who’d I’d worked with in the past and thought was a friend sent back her RSVP with the names of all her children scrawled on it and a note saying that she legally(?) had the right to bring her kids along.

    Told her no! Compared to some of the other drama that day entailed she was actually rather minor.

    1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

      “You have to let me bring my children! It’s THE LAW.” I literally laughed out loud. I tell ya, life is a rich, rich tapestry.

      2. Rainy*

        My MIL was furious that we had a childfree wedding (nursing babies welcome to attend with parents, but that was it) because she wanted her niece to be able to bring her four sons, all of whom were under the age of seven and thoroughly ill-behaved. Her niece, on the other hand, excitedly left them all with her own MIL and she and her husband drank so heavily that her husband spent most of the night hitting on one of my coworkers and the niece danced like no one was watching, including busting out several of her old floor routine moves from when she was a nationally-ranked gymnast.

          1. Rainy*

            The wedding, or the dancing? The dancing was *amazing*! :) No shade to my husband’s cousin, I just thought it was hilarious that my MIL was so focused on the cousin bringing the kids when from what I could tell, the cousin didn’t want to bring them!

  46. Forrest Rhodes*

    Gertrude, dear, if you think this wedding is going to be so boring that you have to bring along someone to talk to, then why in the brown-eyed world do you even WANT to attend in the first place? For the free cake?

    I just don’t understand her logic (if any)!

    1. ItWasMyWedding*

      LW here-

      Right? That was my logic. Like, no one is forcing you to go here.

      She just said she WANTED to come. She just was afraid of how bored she’d be.

      Main character energy indeed.

    2. Buni*

      A friend of mine is part of a huge, sprawling South Asian community where the expectation is that all weddings are 500+ people, drop in / drop out, just rock up. She’s constantly being invited to her Parents’ Neighbour’s Nephew’s Dog’s weddings and pretty much is just yep, wont know anyone, going for the food…

  47. Kali*

    Why are people so weird about weddings? It’s nice to get a “plus-one” invite, but it’s not required, especially when space and budget don’t allow for it. If I’d had plus-ones for everyone invited to my wedding, I would have had to go back and cut out half of them, which would have been way more awkward. As it was, I had the best man insist we invite his parents (we did – it was early enough that we could, we just never imagined they wanted to come), a very close friend who was seated at my table tell me *that* morning that she couldn’t make it because Reasons (and then I never saw her again, wtf), and someone I hadn’t spoken to in about 4 years message me afterward out of the blue and yell at me for *not* inviting her (I always wondered if she regretted it when she got married a few years later and saw the price per head).

    If I ever get married again, I’m eloping.

  48. Ann O'Nemity*

    Some people are oblivious to wedding etiquette. An ex-boss crashed my small no-kids wedding with her baby and a coworker I barely remembered.

    1. allathian*

      Ouch! Was she your boss at the time of the wedding, at least? Or was she already an ex-boss?

  49. Glad I'm Retired*

    I’ve read other advice columns about guests trying to finagle a plus one. Even worse, there are guests who are insulted because they can’t bring their kids. God forbid their children are left out of something.

    1. Glad I'm Retired*

      I want to clarify that it’s nice if plus ones and children can be invited, but I think it’s rude to confront the hosts about it.

    2. Sitting Duck*

      I’m going to a wedding next year, of a old friend, and she somewhat sheepishly told me and her other bridesmaid (we both have 2 kids) that our kids weren’t going to be invited, and let me tell you – both of us whooped in excitement. Choosing not to bring kids is different as a parent, than having the bride ask you not to bring them. Now I don’t have to feel bad about explaining to my kid why I don’t want to bring them….

      While I know not everyone feels this way – I’d much rather attend a wedding without my kids, because I want to be able to enjoy the wedding and my friend, and not have to constantly entertain, wander off, feed, etc. my children.

      I did have kids at my wedding, but only 3, my own 4.5 year old, and my 4.5 & 3 year old nieces. Other people invited had kids, but they were perfectly okay to leave them behind.

      1. allathian*

        Lots of people don’t want kids at their parties because they can’t trust the parents to be as responsible as you were. If you bring your kids to an event, your kids have to be your first priority to ensure that they don’t spoil the experience for everyone else.

        When my son was 6 we got invited to a family wedding where kids were welcome. My MIL and her husband were also invited, so when the cake had been cut and eaten, my MIL and her husband went home and our son went with them for a sleepover (he loved sleepovers at gran’s) while we partied the night away and spent the night in a hotel.

  50. Star78*

    I’m going to slightly disagree here and say I think all single guests should have been allowed to bring a plus one- however, Gertrude was extremely rude!!!

    1. ItWasMyWedding*

      LW

      If I had to give every guest a plus one, my coworkers wouldn’t have been invited at all. And I liked (most) of them. And they knew my husband socially as well.

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Yeah, oh my goodness people can decide for themselves if they can cope without their partner/a date for the evening. Only one person brought their S.O. to a work wedding recently and he pretty much wanted to leave immediately (taking her with him) because everyone on the table but him worked together. I think it was nice of you to offer what space you did have.

      2. Former Admin Turned PM*

        My husband and I got a sheepish phone call from a (not super close but totally awesome) friend inviting us to his wedding a week or two out. He and his wife had people they’d wanted to invite but didn’t have the space, but when they realized that the declines (either outright declines or plus ones that didn’t materialize) were enough to invite all of of in a particular group (6 or 8 people beyond the band members who were closer to them and therefore already on the list), we got invited. All of us were jazzed because we were just happy for the couple and the invite was far enough ahead to allow us all to find babysitters, but if anyone had chosen to be offended by being on the B-list, they could just have skipped it. Things happen and there are logistical reasons that we don’t get invited to things sometimes.

  51. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

    I have personally brought my brother as a plus one to several weddings and other events, BUT:
    1. A plus one was included on the invitation.
    2. My brother and I are very close and share many friends, so he would never know only me at the event.
    3. I specifically asked the bride if that would be okay, and in at least one case RSVP’d as just me and then got a message from the bride that maybe my brother would like to come as my plus one?
    Gertrude is giving us siblings who like to attend weddings a bad name!

  52. Artemesia*

    I love your lament Alison about not having a wedding kerfuffle to make it memorable. My nephew’s wedding was fabulous except for my brother’s long time friend and his wife who were both drunk and embarrassed themselves in making speeches although my brother had specifically asked them to not do so. The friend’s wife fell off her chair when she returned to her table. Now 20 or so years late this story comes up every time the wedding does and everyone laughs.

    I eloped on a Friday 13 and our car permanently died on the way to the JP and we had to sell it for parts in the town we were eloping to — and that was just the beginning of weird stuff on that day — all of which we treasure.

  53. Bex (in computers)*

    Unrelated to LW, but as an example that all weddings include drama …

    My husband and I didn’t tell our friends we were getting married. Instead, everyone was invited over for barbecue and board games and asked to bring a side dish. Then when everyone was there, they were handed cards that said “surprise, we’re getting married … now!”

    There were at least three women crying because they were furious they were not bridesmaids (I’d met all of them in the last six months). It turned out one half of a married couple had sneaked out to see her affair partner during the meal and was found out when her husband was looking for her as everyone settled in for the three minute ceremony. I had a panic attack (people looking at me oh noooooo!!!!!) and fell asleep on a couch inside, prompting the children (all under age seven) to assume I’d eaten poisoned cake and died … who then rushed out and threw the (uncut and uneaten) cake over the wooden fence and into the street, apparently striking an older couple out for an evening stroll who called the police over the pastry assault.

    to the LW: Gertrude was just gonna be weird.

    2. Hlao-roo*

      o.O

      I am impressed by the shear mismatch in the super-chill wedding you planned for and the super-dramatic wedding you got!

    4. Filofaxes*

      …Why have a wedding ceremony (let alone a surprise one) if you didn’t want all the attention to be on you? And how did you train your body/mind to make you fall asleep during panic attacks? Because if I could do that, I would honestly not mind having another panic attack, it would be a huge improvement over my body’s usual method (throat closing up, whole GI system threatening to go into revolt, cold sweat, horrible heart palpitations, etc).

      1. allathian*

        One of my friends doesn’t fall asleep when she has a panic attack, but if she’s alone, she can hyperventilate to the point that she passes out. When she’s unconscious, her breathing returns to normal and then she wakes up.

        I can see the logic in a surprise wedding, because by doing it that way you avoid much of the stress that goes with organizing a wedding, and especially the sort of stress that comes from interfering family members who want to have their say in your wedding. You avoid the hassle and get your family members as witnesses.

  54. Jinni*

    LW is lucky. My mother did this because she didn’t want to have no one to talk to…. At the last minute she invited four extra people to the rehearsal dinner and wedding. I have zero idea why people need someone to talk to for this limited time event. It’s like having a vegan wedding. It’s literally a few hours in someone’s life. Short term discomfort (even if *I* think it’s unwarranted) is okay….

    1. Sitting Duck*

      I agree – why do you need to know people at an event you go to? While my Husband has attended most of the weddings I’ve been to, I actually spent pretty little time with him. I talked to other people at the table and got to know some of the couples other friends/family. Most of the weddings I’ve been to are of grade school friends, and while we’ve kept in touch we have different circles, so while I know the bride (or groom) and usually their immediate family, I rarely know anyone else – and those people are all typically otherwise occupied at a wedding!

      I’ll note to that I am 100% and introvert, I am not one to talk to people I don’t know on the street, or in other settings, but I guess a wedding is different – because you have at least something in common – you know one of the two people getting married!

    2. Sydney Ellen Wade*

      “It’s literally a few hours in someone’s life.”

      THIS. To everyone saying, “All guests should have a plus one,” you can’t celebrate with strangers for a few hours to support someone you care about?

      1. allathian*

        Indeed! That said, a few hours is one thing, destination weddings with events over several days are a different matter.

  55. Fiona*

    I think if the guest is going to know zero people at the wedding – like, literally nobody – then it behooves you to give them a plus-one. But going to a wedding with work colleagues is like the total opposite of that situation! OP handled it perfectly, IMO.

    1. ItWasMyWedding*

      LW here:

      It would absolutely be a different equation if a guest would not know another person at the wedding (I ensured every person would be a table where they knew at least 2 other people. Thanks excel!), but that was not the case here.

  56. Spooky*

    If they’re not in a serious relationship (and they’re not in a situation where they would be complete strangers to everyone else at the wedding) you absolutely do not have to include a plus one on the invitation. Your wedding is not a custom entertainment for them, it’s a sacred ritual which they are observing because they ostensibly care about you. Some people have forgotten the ability to suck it up and have two hours of their lives not be about their own comfort and entertainment.

    If it is a situation where there someone who would never have met, or have nothing in common with anyone else at your wedding (not alumni of the same school or whatever) it’s kind to try to include a plus one in that situation, but still not required by manners. People are adults; they can talk to, and be friendly with strangers, especially at a wedding where there are a lot of really standard things to say to people and things to talk about to initiate conversation (“so how do you know X?”).

    Good for you for not budging when she tried to wear you down. She can talk to coworkers for a couple hours, or she can decline to go. Ridiculous.

    1. Spooky*

      Besides, plus ones who are further out from knowing the wedding party, and not in a relationship, have kind of a reputation for being the ones who act badly at weddings- drinking too much, being rude, making a scene. Obviously bad behavior isn’t exclusively there domain, but they have perhaps fewer social disincentives for disrespecting the event.

    2. JanetM*

      The one wedding in which I was part of the bridal party (maid of honor), I was expected to stand in the receiving line with the couple.

      I spent a lot of time saying, “Oh, you’re a friend of D’s from college, lovely to meet you,” and “Oh, you work with P, lovely to meet you,” only to look up at the next guests and say, “Oh, you’re my parents, hi!” (My parents were, in general, big hits with my friends; I just didn’t know they’d been invited.)

  57. Sunflower*

    When she left her job, I would have given her an etiquette book with a bookmark in the chapter regarding invitations.

      1. ItWasMyWedding*

        LW/OP here.

        Gertrude did not leave for a new job. She just… left. I always suspected there was more to that story but all I have is the weird message she sent me afterwards about how she doesn’t hate anyone from the office.

  58. Lady Danbury*

    I’ve never been to a wedding where I literally don’t know anyone else attending. At coworkers weddings, I know the other invited coworkers. At friends’ weddings, I know other friends from the same friend group. Same for family weddings. While I understand the concern about not having people to socialize with, it’s just never been my experience, whether I’ve attended with a partner or by myself (either because I was single or because my partner couldn’t make it for whatever reason).

    1. doreen*

      I’ve asked about this before and people will say something like it’s a childhood friend’s wedding or a small friend group from was invited and no one else could make it – and I don’t really understand even those situations- a childhood friend invites me to her wedding even though I apparently haven’t been close to her in years ( because I don’t know her current friends) and we weren’t close enough as kids for me to know her family. Probably won’t attends. If everyone else from the friend group couldn’t make it, I would decline since I would be uncomfortable.

      1. Lady Danbury*

        Wedding of a childhood friend with whom I’m no longer close that requires travel? Definitely a hard pass!

      2. amoeba*

        For me, the weddings I was invited to where I knew almost nobody:

        – my flatmates (to whom I was quite close, but not to their circle of friends, which was mostly from the city 2 h away where they had studied before moving to my city). My other flatmate and best friend was also invited though, so basically my plus 1.

        – former coworkers who did invite other former coworkers, but they were all from the PhD generation before me, so I’d only met one of them, like, twice before. (That one was for both me and my boyfriend who also used to work in the same group though, so again, I had my +1).

        Plus of course when I was the plus one, but that’s a different situation, sure!

        In all of those cases, I actually really liked the people getting married and it wasn’t super far, so I probably would have gone even alone, because why not? Nice dinner, party, seeing the couple again after some time… What I would not have done is invite extra people though, haha.

    2. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      I went to a wedding where I didn’t know anyone except for the bride. She was a former co-worker. It was a destination wedding on a Caribbean island, and I thought that it would be a nice vacation. No other former co-workers that we had in common were invited. At the wedding, I talked to the bride’s former landlady, who told me that she had no idea why she was invited (she, the bride’s widowed mother, the bride’s two brothers, and I were the only guests from the bride’s side), but she said that she decided to go because it was a good excuse to go to the Caribbean island.

    3. allathian*

      I’ve never been to a wedding where I didn’t know anyone else attending, but I have been to a wedding where the only person I knew well was my LDR SO, now husband, and he was the best man so I didn’t sit with him during the ceremony. I’d met many of the guests on the groom’s side before, but I didn’t know any of them particularly well. I’d met the bride once, but none of her friends.

      They had a bridal table for the couple, and a head table for the wedding party, including spouses and SOs, and the parents of the couple.

      That wedding was nevertheless one of the more enjoyable weddings I’ve been to.

    4. Former Admin Turned PM*

      I did once attend a wedding (out of state, even!) where I literally had only met one person other than the bride and groom. The bride was a classmate of mine in a multi-year organizational management program with folks from all over, and our graduating class really bonded as a group. The classmate that knew her best and had introduced the bride and groom was part of the low-key festivities and the bride kind of opened it up to all of the classmates in the weeks leading up (not formal mailed invitations, but an open call in our group chats) and I took her up on it. I had a fun time meeting all her friends and family, and many of them were really stoked that I was there to represent the good wishes of our crew. I flew to SC on Saturday morning, checked into my hotel just in time to change my clothes and drive to the church, then flew home the next morning. I was back MD in time to do my regular Sunday grocery trip.

  59. Trixie Belden was my hero*

    All these comments are great but they can’t top the coworker wedding drama from “You may also like…”

    A coworker prayed for my fiance’s death so we didn’t invite her to our wedding and now there is drama…

    That one is in my AAM Top Ten Best of All Time!

  60. Nosy*

    My husband’s (single) friend showed up to our wedding with both his sister and his sister’s best friend! The sister and best friend ended up being our unofficial hype team. They were the first on the dance floor, took the photo props around to every table and made sure people got their goofy pictures with them, and helped keep the kids (my husband’s cousins – complete strangers to them) entertained. Almost 10 years later, my husband and I talk about how glad we were that they showed up.

  61. buddleia*

    “I don’t hate anyone at work, but I needed to grow as a person and out of my comfort zone.”

    Lol ok.

    If I was OP and got that message, that’s how I’d respond in my head and then ignore it.

  62. Definitely not me*

    This is amazing! I like that LW stuck to her guns. A local couple we know was planning their child’s wedding in their backyard. Not only was space limited, but the wedding was for a same-sex couple, and the parents were a little concerned about how some relatives and acquaintances would feel about that, so they were very choosy about guests. My spouse and I were not invited, which we completely understood, because we weren’t close with the child and had never even met the soon-to-be spouse. However. Other friends in our circle were invited, but only those who were close to the child or had grown up with them. Not those individuals’ spouses. As one can imagine, this didn’t sit well with the invitees, and two of them decided to bring their spouses anyway. Which not only led to the very situation described in this letter (no place setting or chair for the extra guests, and not enough food), but it also damaged the formerly close friendships among them. We ended up being thankful we weren’t invited to that mess!

  63. Elliot*

    OMG WHAT?! I literally cannot with people.

    Alison, if you like weird wedding drama, boy do I have stories for you…. lol. Our first wedding venue turned out to be a ponzi scheme, covid shutdowns happened a week before our planned wedding, my MOH flew to New York during covid on a whim and quit on me, and then our wedding planner got banned from our third venue we booked. We were on a podcast because our wedding drama stories were so unbelievable :’)

  64. PlainJane*

    And that is why Miss Manners recommends not using “plus-one” and just asking people if they have a significant other and addressing the invite specifically. Miss Gertrude Nosypants is invited. If she happens to say, yes, I go with my sister everywhere, then it would be addressed to Miss Gertrude Nosypants and Miss Minerva Nosypants.” But you don’t get to do it after the invite goes out.

    1. ItWasMyWedding*

      LW Here:

      That’s actually exactly what we did- we didn’t give an option of plus ones; but individually asked about SOs to add to the RSVP card. No one’s said “…and guest”.

      In the case of my coworkers husband, I specifically asked his name to address the invitation. This actually was another point of contention with Gertrude.

      “How come SHE gets a plus one (her husband), but I CAN’T INVITE MY SISTER?!?!”

      1. PlainJane*

        :facepalm:

        The answer is, if it was done this way, that you specifically invited her husband. But it doesn’t sound like she got the memo anyway.

  65. Sitting Duck*

    I think communication is the key here. In my experience, a plus one is typically implied.

    Because of this, the couple of friends I invited to my wedding whom I didn’t have space for a plus 1, I reached out to them before they even got the invite and explained the situation. My wedding was on a constrained capacity, we only had 40 spots, so 20 for each of us to invite. Neither of them had a problem with this, and there was no mixed communication when sending the invite as to if they could/should add their own plus 1. (It may be prudent to note that these two guests were sisters, so they had each other, but I had independent relationships with each so they were actually both invited, I had also grown up with them, so they knew everyone else I had invited as well)

    I think if you communicate these things ahead of time – spell it out clearly – people are less likely to get huffy about it. I am in NO way saying Gertrude was right to do what she did, but I think in general, more communication is better than less. Even a small card/note in the envelope with the invite saying ‘due to capacity limits, we only have space for those listed on the invite’…..or something more eloquent (words are not my strong suit).

    On another note, I did go as a plus 1 to a wedding with my sister. It was a bit odd, as I didn’t really know anyone else there, although I think she also didn’t know too many of the guests (despite being close with the bride) and so she brought me to have someone she knew there. But she was explicitly given a plus 1 invite….

    1. Somehow I Manage*

      I’ll push back a bit. When I’ve been invited to weddings before I was married, there was always a note that it was “Somehow I Manage and guest” if I was allowed to bring a plus one. If it was “Somehow I Manage” I’d assume it was just me. And even if there was lack of clarity, when Gertrude asked, OP was quite clear that it was an invite only for Gertrude, and she still reacted the way she did. OP was under no obligation to be more explicit.

      1. Sitting Duck*

        Fair, and I don’t disagree with you. That is how I would address an invite, and read an invite to a function, those who are listed on the envelope are the only ones invited.

        However, I just don’t think that is a widely enough accepted ‘truth’ to rely on it.

        I think most people tend to assume that others ‘know’ the social rules that they do. I was just trying to say, that I like to air on the side of caution, and never assume that someone else has the same generally understood social norms that I do, so being explicit within the invite could curtail someone adding a plus one.

        Gertrude was way over the line, and should have simply accepted it when OP gave her the answer/reason/No.

        I’ve always been one to give people the benefit of the doubt, and tried to look at situations from points of view that I don’t hold, to try to understand where they are coming from.

        Again, Gertrude went way too far, I am not defending her. I am trying to suggest that social norms are not always understood by everyone the same way, and by being explicit in the first communication (the invite) perhaps this could have been avoided.

        I also recognize that there are just ‘those people’ out there, and baffling situations will happen regardless. :)

        1. Observer*

          so being explicit within the invite could curtail someone adding a plus one.

          Really? Do you really think that someone who *crossed out* the number on the invitation and replaces *really* did not know what was going on? Highly unlikely.

          And someone who can actually say to the LW what Gertrude said to the LW when she *explicitly* told Gertrude that Sis can’t come, is NOT going to be deterred by seeing it on the card. Why would that make a difference? She *still* thinks it’s ok to tell her host that the event is going to be boring, she has a “right” to bring her sister, and she going to bring Sis anyway, so there! It’s only when the LW told her that Sis will literally not have where to sit that she backed down.

          So no, nothing the LW did with her invitations would have prevented this kind of nonsense.

          I just don’t think that is a widely enough accepted ‘truth’ to rely on it.

          Come on. This is pure fictional world building. Functional adults should know that you don’t invite people to someone else’s event. And functional adults (which she apparently what not quite) do know that when you are told that someone tells you that your invitee can’t come, you can’t throw a hissy fit, insult your prospective host and then threaten to bring your guest anyway.

          In fact, most teens know better than that!

          1. Sitting Duck*

            Yes, Really……

            Did you read my last line?
            I also recognize that there are just ‘those people’ out there, and baffling situations will happen regardless. :)”

            I said it could curtail this response, not that it 100% would.

            LW asked for suggestions as to what she could have done differently, this was my suggestion.

            And yes, I will stick to my guns on thinking that it is NOT a 100% accepted truth that plus ones aren’t implied.

            LW even mentions I am not an etiquette expert so maybe inviting sisters is a thing in other cultures? There are also many comments already mentioning other people who have brought people not on the invite to a wedding…which implies to me that it is NOT a 100% accepted truth.

            Also, I never said that how Gertrude reacted after LW confronted her was reasonable, but I also don’t think that it means that Gertrude is not a fully functioning adult?!? I think that is a huge assumption made on very few details that we are given.

          2. Sitting Duck*

            There is even a comment above somewhere, where the husband was the only one on the invite, and he assumed it meant his spouse wasn’t invited…showed up at the wedding to find that the spouse had a name card/spot at the table and the wedding couple asked why the spouse hadn’t come and was baffled when the husband told them why she had stayed at home (she hadn’t ben listed on the invite) because in the eyes of the wedding couple ‘of course’ she was invited….

            1. basically functional*

              Something similar happened to my husband and me. Only the two of us were listed on the invitation, so we assumed the kids weren’t invited and didn’t bring them. The bride and groom were disappointed they weren’t there. Shrug.

  66. Sharon*

    Who are these people who want to go to the weddings of people they don’t know? Even if I were invited to my sister’s colleague’s wedding as a plus-one, I wouldn’t go. I think plus-ones are more for your cousin who you haven’t spoken to in years and have no idea whether they are in a relationship or not.

    1. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      One of them is the female friend of my female co-worker Diane. Diane and I were invited to the wedding of our co-worker Melinda, along with other co-workers and the owners of the company. Diane was told that she could bring a plus-one. Since she wasn’t dating anyone at the time, she brought a female friend, who was delighted to go somewhere and get a free fancy meal along with an open bar.

    2. amoeba*

      Huh, where I live it’s very, very normal for partners to go along for weddings of people they’ve never met. Or do you just mean people who aren’t romantic partners? Because honestly, I don’t see the difference…

  67. Mango Freak*

    Gertrude was so unreasonable and outside the norms that it’s hard to know what will and won’t help the situation. I might’ve responded to “I’ll be bored” with, “Oh! I’d thought you would want to be included, but if it sounds boring please don’t feel obligated to come. I’ll mark you down as a No, don’t even worry about it.”

  68. Former Gremlin Herder*

    This is bananas. People like this have such a way of getting under your skin and making you feel like you’re wrong for having very reasonable boundaries, but you were 100% in the right. For a counter example, when my best friend got married my long term partner couldn’t make it to her out of state wedding because he’d recently been through surgery, and I told my friend that I’d be on my own. She, very thoughtfully, invited a mutual friend who I’m very close with but she wasn’t as close to, which meant I did have a “buddy” and also the seat got filled. But I never would have dreamed of asking for that!!!

  69. Disco Fever*

    I recently received a wedding invitation addressed to myself, my husband, “and family”. Between us (second marriages) we have five adult children, three in relationships of varying lengths, one with children of their own. We could be RSVPing for 2 or 12. We would have very much appreciated OP’s clarity :)

  70. TheBunny*

    Alison, I had to hire security at my wedding to keep my husband’s ex wife from keeping her promise to crash the wedding and object.

    She is…not smart…and posted her plans on FB where a mutual friend saw and sent a screenshot.

    I had enough drama for both of us. LOL

  71. Wedding Drama*

    My cousin asked if she could bring her boyfriend to family wedding. They had been together for about 6 months at the time of the wedding (so less when invitations went out). She was told no. She brought him anyway. The groom’s grandfather didn’t come at the last minute, so she decided her boyfriend could be the grandfather’s replacement. I was appalled.

  72. CV*

    At this point in the world, I don’t think we can assume that everyone (even in a smaller country) has the same wedding culture, so I agree with the comments that say communication ahead of time is very important.

    We also mainly hear about the high-drama weddings, rather than the ones where everything went smoothly, because thats what gets remembered.

    “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” — The Hobbit

    1. HonorBox*

      The interesting thing is that I feel like an invitation that just says “NAME ONLY” and even has a 1 in the corner is pretty darn clear communication.

  73. SpayPets*

    Alison is spot on with her etiquette ruling. To further her advice that the LW continue to dine out on this story, I recommend the LW submit this story to the Were You Raised by Wolves etiquette podcast as one of their “Bonkers”stories. Wereyouraisedbywolves.com

    (I think Alison would be an awesome guest on that pod, btw)

  74. Raida*

    She sounds to me like a teenager that’s learnt if she’s chatty and pushy she can get her way and get praise for it – I’d guess she was popular in school and didn’t realise how much she relied on that popularity to avoid consequences of being called out for lying or being lazy.

    You handled this well, although I would have pushed for an rsvp as in “If I do not receive your confirmation one way or the other by [date] you’ll be recorded as not attending.” and let her blow up childishly at work so the boss could see she was an issue.

    Also, I would have clarified that my boss *did* know she had lower outputs than others, in a 1:1 situation where I could vent a little on her putting energy into drama instead of work.

    1. I&I*

      I assumed the opposite – that she wants to invite her sister because she doesn’t get on with people outside her family. Her attempts to get unearned credit and drag people into her drama are fairly crass, which doesn’t sound like someone socially skilled, at least to me. A lazy popular girl might well still create drama, but I’d expect her to be better at getting her way!

  75. OMG! Bees!*

    Well, at least Gertrude didn’t show up in a bridal dress, or get drunk and thrash the venue or anything. But my bar for wedding drama is off, esp after a Reddit one where everyone except for 1 coworker was invited to a wedding (bad for the reasons usually mentioned here) ended up causing a lot of workplace drama afterwards

  76. CatMintCat*

    I’ve been invited to (and attended) several work-friend weddings in the last few years. Never has my husband (and 40 years is long-standing) been invited, nor has he expected to be. Gertrude is seriously rude and has an inflated sense of her own importance.

    1. Elizabeth West*

      This reminds me of the time my ex got mad that my then-boss invited me and my ex to her wedding, but not his daughter, who neither she nor the groom knew. She also did not know when the invitations were issued if we would have her that weekend, and the wedding was very small.

      It turned out that we did, and he was unwilling to give up the time with her, which made total sense. But the DEFCON 3-level bitching at leaving her off the invitation was unwarranted. I went to the wedding alone.

  77. NoDramaMamaLlama*

    Gertrude: “Who’s going to stop me if I bring my sister anyway?!”

    OP: “The Entitlement Police. I hired them for the night.”

  78. Pelikan*

    “If it’s any solace, I believe all the best weddings include weird drama. (I was disappointed that mine didn’t have any)”

    As someone who’s been to weddings with drama (ranging from “random 3 year old made themselves the flower girl aww how cute” to “call the cops before more people get more broken bones” levels of drama), trust me: you don’t actually want drama at a wedding. You can’t control if it’ll be the type of drama where a Gertrude brings her sister who wasn’t invited, or the type of drama where someone is jilted at the altar—or the type of “drama” involving physical violence and state troopers showing up.

    I tend to side-eye people who think weddings are a great place to inject more drama.

    1. Expelliarmus*

      I think there is also a difference between “drama” and “funny anecdotes”; I can respect people who would be down for some quirky anecdote fodder (ex. the commenter who said their cat pooped on the floor in their living room), but yeah, drama for the sake of drama is an odd thing to ask for.

  79. Greg*

    A friend of mine, who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, told me that one of the guests she invited to her wedding asked to bring a plus-one. She politely explained that they had limited seating and it wouldn’t be possible. The guest never responded, didn’t send a gift, and AFAIK has not spoken to my friend to this day

  80. Never the Twain*

    > In your shoes, I would cherish this story for years to come, and I recommend that you do the same.

    If the questions to AAM ever reach an overwhelming level, this would serve as a good automated response to about 40% of them

  81. Megan*

    As incredibly rude as Gertrude was, at least she asked first instead of just brining the sister to the wedding. At our wedding, we actually had an out of town family member (who was traveling with several other close family members including her sons), bring her sister and teen niece with her to our wedding unannounced and uninvited! Worst yet, they also came to the rehearsal dinner too! We had to scramble to rearrange seats to make room for them at the wedding. This was my husband’s aunt by marriage, so her sister and niece were not related to him. I’d never met them before and he’d only met them a few times before and didn’t know them well. On top of this, we had 2 couples bring 5 kids between them all when kids were not invited (outside of some cousins that were in the wedding.)

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