Zero awareness of wedding invite etiquette

[u/Natural-Cupcake3359]

We are having a small wedding at a private residence in a few weeks. As late-bloomer lesbians in the second chapter of our lives, we invited only people who authentically support us and love us to attend. We've both been married before, so we want this wedding to actually be about us this time.

We invited our friends, a couple that we have known the entire duration of our relationship, let's call them Jill and Bill. Jill just texted tonight and said "Bill can't make it, so I'm bringing my friend instead." This was weird for us. We don't know the friend and the wedding is 50 people. We know every single person attending, and we know them well, so having one rando in there feels strange. We tried to explain that we'd love to have Jill come, but we invited Bill, not some girl we've never met. Unfortunately, they responded by saying that neither one will be attending and that they are no longer interested in our friendship. They couldn't believe we'd expect Jill to attend alone if Bill couldn't go. (Note - these friends are local and so is the wedding, so we're not saying she must travel alone).

My partner and I have always been taught that whoever is explicitly listed on the invite is who is invited. If it says "Jill and Bill Smith" the invite is not for "Jill Smith and Guest." I'm sort of surprised that 1) we had to explain this to middle-aged adults and 2) it was so offensive they don't want to be our friends. Their loss. But please people, have a little more self awareness than Jill and Bill. 🙄 Sigh.

Edit: A few contextual notes. Jill and Bill knew it was a small wedding because we had discussed it with them when we were planning the event. Also, my partner was very polite when she said that we weren't open to Jill bringing a friend. No hostility or shaming, just kindly explaining.

[u/Quirky_Movie]

I'm 50. This person is strange. You're right that an invite addressed to specific people is for specific people. Couples do not get plus 2s on their invite.

She should have reached out and let you know that Bill could no longer make it and would you be open to her bringing this person. This is a request which is totally fair to make for this person's comfort while traveling. It would also be okay for you to decline it and ask to meet up with her and her husband next time you are in town. It is not okay to assume you can just bring anyone as replacement if you haven't been offered a plus one.

I love that she's local and acting like it's a trip to the moon.

Perhaps she assumed that Alphabet Mafia does not know Miss Manners. More likely her husband just doesn't feel close enough to care if he travels to the wedding and she doesn't travel alone.

[u/yarn_b → u/Quirky_Movie]

I wish I could have had you give a TED talk on this to my father in law and his wife. We invited 22 people to our wedding. In response to a formal invitation, they asked if the date was set in stone. Not a question I even knew was possible in response to a wedding invite, but we clarified - yes, this is the date. The wedding is fully planned - hence the invitation. They RSVP no with much complaining about how they’ll be at their time share. Not because it’s their week - which we asked about and avoided - but because they had a chance to get an extra week for free and our wedding meant they would have to leave one day early from the free week.

This was confusing already because it was during the tail end of Covid restrictions and they hadn’t gone to their time share at all since Covid started because they refused to test to travel and Aruba was requiring all travelers to buy health insurance at a daily rate for their stay. The wife specifically said she was not “going to be part of the government’s statistics” by having a Covid test and that Aruba was just using the health insurance as a cash grab.

So fast forward to two weeks before the wedding, days before they should be flying to Aruba. FIL calls and says they might decide to leave Aruba early. How late can they change their RSVP to yes? I told him I needed to know by the Tuesday of the wedding week. He says they’re looking into flying to Aruba and then flying from there to us and then home. This conversation to me was just confirmation that Aruba was never happening and they didn’t seriously consider ever going to Aruba because they had no flights booked and we were within 72 hours of them being in Aruba.

Tuesday comes and he calls my husband and tells him they decided to just skip Aruba (obviously was never in play) and can come to the wedding…but…they’re going to be staying with the wife’s daughter and her husband, and they don’t see why they shouldn’t just bring the two of them. My husband says no, they’re not invited. Father in law then texts me, as if I haven’t already heard this, and tells me they just really think it would be “neat” if they could bring wife’s daughter and her husband because they’re staying with them and not renting a car and will need a ride. I also say no. He decides to further the insult by saying he would pay for whatever the cost is of them to attend, as if that was the issue.

When we said no, they refused to come to the wedding and we never heard from them again other than to get a few texts from the wife telling us we’re horrible people with no manners or etiquette and they felt like we were punishing them by planning our wedding when and how we did and that we intentionally excluded them. My husband found out from his uncle that his dad was in hospice and was able to see him right before he died, but his father basically rage quit our lives until his literal death because we denied them a plus 2 at a very intimate wedding and he and his wife 100% believe that they were the aggrieved parties in the matter.

[u/RuggedHangnail → u/yarn_b]

Your FIL and MIL were real pieces of work. I've had a few friends in situations like you described. Each time, the bride and groom capitulated and allowed the entitled guests to have their way. And each time, the entitled guests somehow didn't show up at the last minute anyway!!! They never wanted to come. But they wanted to make it your fault that they didn't come, so they didn't looked like the jerks who didn't care and were disrespectful.

[u/lilgreenglobe → u/yarn_b]

That was a wild trip!

[u/Quirky_Movie → u/yarn_b]

I'm sorry. :-(

It was obviously a ploy by the wife to accomplish exactly what she did: drive a wedge between father and son.

[u/yarn_b → u/Quirky_Movie]

100%, and just the last act in a 20+ year effort to distance him from both of his kids. What would be exceptionally sad to me but for her horrendous conduct toward us is that, with FIL’s death, she discovered what he had been telling her for years was wrong and she will not continue to get 100% of his pension payments until her death nor will her SSRI increase to 100% of his payment. She is now homeless at age 70 because her daughter also doesn’t want anything to do with her and wouldn’t take her in, and her daughter is her only living relative. She’s staying with a friend and waiting for an opening in a sliding scale housing complex. I’m generally very sympathetic but we don’t turn back into family just because she needs us now after subjecting my husband decades of abuse, including refusing him a place to live when he was homeless after being discharged from the Marines.

[u/Quirky_Movie → u/yarn_b]

Why would she believe that? The SSRI is law.

At least she is reaping what she sewed.

[u/yarn_b → u/Quirky_Movie]

Because her husband told her. She’s not intelligent. He thought he was smarter than everyone around him, and wouldn’t listen to what anyone else had to say if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Their entire relationship was her telling him what to do and him telling her what to think.

He was a public school teacher for about 20 years. He had a union pension. He bragged about how he retired at 59 and was making more money per month being retired than he made when he was working. He thought his $4,000/month pension payment was for his life then guaranteed for his wife’s life. The way his pension worked was it was an annuity conversion at retirement. He could have picked an annuity with these types of guarantees, but his monthly payment would have been way lower and he would likely have had to defer the first payment date for some length of time to get a better return. Since we had no contact with them for a while, I’m not sure how long his pension payment was guaranteed based on his annuity selection, but I took it that it had already stopped.

10-11 years ago, when this was all going down with the pension, I tried to get him to talk to an elder law attorney because everything he was saying was wrong. I’m an attorney, but of course he would never listen to me, and I don’t practice in this specific area, but I do deal with benefits and SSD (which he was trying to get) and structures/annuities. He said he didn’t need to pay an attorney because the union benefits person explained it all. Even basic math of working ~20 years and never making more than $70k/year - the idea that his pension would pay him $4k/month for not just his life but also his wife’s, with zero delay in the first payment after conversion, is lunacy. Public pensions used to be great, but even this is beyond.

They had no other savings. Their only assets previously were two properties - one that needed $100k in renovations for sell for $250k and a vacation campsite they sold for $80k. They had taken out a mortgage to fund the renovation and owned the house outright before that. The campsite had a mortgage. They ended up with around $200k, which they put toward the down payment of a $400k house in Florida and their move. At 64/65, they went into debt to move to Florida. Neither had any savings. Wife also had a very small pension from working as a classroom aide making $30k/year. Neither worked to their full SSA retirement age. He lost more money than he made in a series of get rich quick schemes, including having to file bankruptcy in both 2005 and in 2014 because of real estate losses.

Their house in Florida is in a neighborhood that is already half empty and for sale. The HOA fee is $600/month. Her daughter told me it needs significant repairs/deferred maintenance to even sell, so they tried to offer the deed to the lender in lieu of foreclosure but the lender said no, likely due to the insurance costs and the exceptionally high number of properties already for sale. She was able to get a seasonal renter for this winter to stave off foreclosure and hopefully be able to fix the major issues (which include damage repairs from Hurricane Ian their insurer paid out for but they never completed).

What’s really fucked up is he had life insurance but the beneficiary wasn’t his wife. It was her daughter. The wife had no money to even have a funeral. There was going to be a celebration of life, but that never happened either, presumably because the daughter left as soon as she got her check.