Wedding advice STAT please

samdoj

New member
Hi everyone! My fiancé and I are a poly couple, and obviously soon to be a married couple. Here's the issue. We don't know what to do about our poly friends and their SOs on the guest list for our wedding. Our friend has a boyfriend and a husband, and her husband has a girlfriend. Do we have to invite them all? They are not out, which is a further complication. We are having a very small wedding, therefore we wish to invite as few people as possible, but we are making every effort to include our friends, which they definitely are. We mostly know our friend and her boyfriend, and have barely met her husband or his girlfriend. If either one of us were to start dating now, our OSO wouldn't be able to come. Any ideas on how to navigate this tricky situation would be much appreciated. We don't want to hurt or accidentally exclude anyone. One further piece of information is that she seems closer to her bf than her husband, and her husband seems closer to his gf, which may be due to NRE, although they have all been dating for quite some time now. Thoughts?
 
Yeah, don't give yourself a stroke over it. You could call your friend and ask whether she thinks her husband and his girlfriend should be invited. Explain that you're asking because you know they're not "out."

On the other hand, even if they're not out that doesn't mean they can't all show up to the same social event. They could just take it easy on the PDA's while they're at the wedding. Doesn't sound like it would need to be a major problem.

But ultimately, yeah, it just boils down to inviting the people you'd like to invite. It's your wedding, right? Let it be about you.
 
The bride and groom should never feel obligated to do anything for their wedding that they don't want to do.

If you want to keep it small, just tell them that. By your description, you'd prefer to just have the friend and her boyfriend. You could send separate invitations to the friend and boyfriend and politely mention that you're having a small ceremony and that only people named on the invitations are actually invited to attend.

People who get offended because they're not invited to a wedding need to pull their heads outta their butts and remember that weddings are about the people getting married, not appeasing everyone in their wider sphere.

We put our wedding on a Wednesday in the middle of winter. Partially because it was the anniversary of our first date, but I'm not going to lie: the fact that few people are able to make it out on a Wednesday in the middle of winter was a contributing factor. We wanted to make sure that the only people who showed up were the people close enough to make special accommodations just for us. I think we had 12 guests in total, and it was perfect.
 
I'm inclined to agree. It's bad enough getting those "+1" invitations when you're being invited to a regular mono wedding where they just don't know better... but when you're being invited to a poly wedding by people who know how mono-normative "+1" is... yech.

Also, it sounds like the B&G want to choose the guest, or more accurately, they just want to invite the friend and the friend's bf, both of whom they're friends with, and leave out the husband and the husband's gf. So I see absolutely no problem talking to the friend in person and explaining what they want, and that they don't mean any offense or hard feelings by it, but that it's their wedding and they only want guests whom they're actually close with, not vague acquaintances...
 
At most, if you feel you need to invite the husband as well to be polite, do that so you won't feel bad, quietly explain to your friend your thoughts on inviting both her partners (since they aren't out, she might choose to only come with her husband, not her boyfriend), and let THEM figure out who out of that trio is coming. Your friends partners other partner that you don't know? You are under no obligation to invite them. You barely know them, even less then you know the husband it sounds like. So, feel free to wipe that one off the seating chart.
 
I would give plus one to the mono people and plus 2 for the poly folks. I would never assume you friends would want to bring along their metamores.
 
It's your wedding, invite the people YOU want to be there. Explain to your friend that you're keeping it small therefore couldn't afford to invite the whole group. If you know boyfriend, invite him by name and your friend by name. No plus ones, no confusion. Send them separate invites if you want so if they don't want to be "out" about being together, they can come separately.

It's your wedding, make it how you want it to be. Weddings are also expensive, so I would hope your friend would be understanding about keeping it intimate.
 
Ugh. If my friend made me choose which of my partners to bring (assuming I was able to be open), I would just not come at all.

That would be true for me as well.
BUT having planned a wedding on my own dime, I also understand that just because someone accepts their poly friends, doesnt mean that they can afford all of them to be at the wedding. AND it doesn't mean that they are responsible to invite people that they don't know either.
It does mean that if they need to limit the number of people in attendance that way, they need to also respect that some people will not come because of it and THAT IS OK.
 
"Fine then! I won't even COME to your stupid wedding! Hmmf." Ha. I showed them. Try and make me choose, will they? What do they think this is?

:p

I know you don't mean it like that. That's just how my brain is choosing to hear it... :)

Personally I would just choose one, but we're not a knit family like you guys. Chances are Gralson would be out of town anyway, and Auto doesn't get the chance to escape nearly enough.
 
Sometimes we go in duos. Sometimes all three. But If I opted not to go because only one was invited, it would be on the assumption it was a fincial issue, not a personal affront.
I see NOTHING wrong with saying to someone that their presence is important to you BUT you cant afford to invite parterns at all, or only one or two or who cares how many.
My wedding I invited who mattered to Maca and I. OTHER people were offended we had GG walk the kids up the aisle and stand with us. Who cares? Our wedding.
Other people were offended we invited xyz person. Who cares? Our wedding.
Other people were offended we did not invite tuv people. Who cares, our wedding.

But since the op said, they are looking at small and intimate, financial issues are a factor AND they dont want to offend. Invite the most important people +1. Could give friend AND bf an invite individually +1 and again, they coukd decide if they want to go together or with their other partners or invite their friend/neice/nephew/ sibling/parent whatever.
Ya know?
 
a,b,c,.....t,u,v,(w),x,y,z
Oh good lord! Are you shitting me, I missed that? Never heard anyone use that sequence, it's usually either abc or xyz, so I stared at that sentence for a good long time and could not for the life of me figure out what tuv stood for, hahahaha.

Thanks, SC.
 
sorry Nyc. LOL, I didn't want to use xyz again and I didn't want to use abc cause it might suggest abc should be more important. LOL
So I just picked 3 other sequenced letters. :)
 
LOL, I can't decide whether to use hij or nop.
 
LOL!!!

Okay, I will admit to something ridiculously embarrassing...

After a few minutes of wracking my brains trying to figure out what the term "tuv people" meant, since LR lives in Alaska I wondered, "maybe that's a kind of Eskimo?" You know, like a name for a group, such as Inuit, Aleut... Tuv!

Hey, I said it was embarrassing.
 
Tuv sounds Native Alaskan to me. But I don't think there could be such a thing as a Nop-Nop tribe.

[ducks as necessary]
 
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