Bride and groom didn't greet us at wedding

View Quoted Comment I have a friend from NJ and she said that “cover your plate” is one of those “unwritten rules” of weddings in her area - if you can’t afford that , you aren’t supposed to go to the wedding.
For me, that’s kind of awful. I want to share an important day with people I care about. If I knew someone didn’t come because they didn’t think their gift was good enough, I would be really sad. I’d think I hadn’t been a good friend that they thought I would care, you know?

View Quoted Comment I think if you go to a wedding, you should bring a gift, even if it's just two $20 bills in a dollar store card. I'm sure this is a controversial opinion but to me it's rude to show up to a wedding and not give anything at all. But the cover your plate thing seems strange, because I don't know how you'd know what your meal cost. Honestly I don't even know what food for my own wedding costs per person, since we have one vendor for dinner, another for cake, and probably will DIY apps ourselves, and our caterer charges as a bulk price, not per plate. It's also buffet style so some people will eat more than others. One of the options is fish, and some people have seafood allergies. One of the options is in a cream sauce, and someone has a dairy allergy. How would you even begin to do the mental gymnastics to figure out how much "your meal" cost? I have no idea.

View Quoted Comment I think they prob all talk about how much catering costs?
My view of gifts is to give what is in your budget, and don’t go into debt.
I am also wondering if people that are the “cover your plate” believers maybe have friends and family all in the same place in life economically? There’s a big variety in our guests, economically and culturally. We’re being very vocal about no gifts so hopefully no one will decline based on gift giving ability!

View Quoted Comment Because I was planning a wedding in the same location last year and I know the caterer they use.

View Quoted Comment The cover your plate standard is big in my circles, and I think it's dumb too. I have some friends who are teachers and some friends who are bankers, some who just got out of school and some who are 10 years into their career, some who are very close and some who are less close. Why would I expect all these people to give the same, or to cover some arbitrary amount?

View Quoted Comment I agree.
We’ve both spent the majority of our adult lives not settled in one place, so I’m not sure if that is expected where we live now (nearish to dc).
I really hope everyone honors our wishes and doesn’t bring anything!

View Quoted Comment Exactly! This is the number 1 reason my fiancé and I hesitated to invite family / friends that our families wanted us too. With spending as much as we are on this wedding, our thought process is that you can mingle with us on the dance floor where we will be enjoying the night we will make it a point though to go to tables that have older guests (if those guests will even be in attendance). But it’s a day that flies by and you need to give people some grace. That is a lot of pressure to keep track of each guests you did or did not get to talk with.

That's super rude of them and I'd be offended too. That's like, rule #1 of hosting - you need to personally greet each guest. The easiest way to makes sure it happens is a receiving line or table visits while everyone is eating dinner.

Note: we didn't mingle on the dance floor because it was super crowded. It was too small for a normal 200 person wedding, let alone a covid one haha. But they were in the center of the dance floor all night--having fun, as they should, but not necessarily easy to access or talk to

View Quoted Comment This is how I feel. And if you don't want to spend the time to greet everyone, I totally get it--but maybe scale back the list?


It was nice to see them get married and all, but I didn't like feeling invisible after spending a ton of time and money to attend

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I can't say that particularly sounds enjoyable.

Honestly if I invited someone to my wedding which took me 2 years to plan and cost me almost my yearly salary and piped up that they felt like they shouldn't have been invited because they didn't feel they were greeted/thanked enough, I'd be questioning why I invited them in the first place since the invitation to my union + thank you card wasn't enough for them.

View Quoted Comment Not greeted "enough," greeted at all

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Just inviting people to your wedding isn't enough. It is your responsibility as host to greet them at your event. If you (general you) can't figure out how to do that with the number of guests you're inviting, you need to invite fewer guests.

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We personally will be doing table greets but not going up to each and every couple individually. The best advice I ever received was to not worry about too much on the night and enjoy ourselves - while we will be greeting and thanking guests in groups, on an individual scale is just unrealistic. In any event, I come from a culture in which people would be more offended by not making the invite list than they would be in not receiving a personal thanks directed to them on the night.

We had only 35 guests due to downsizing and we still didn’t get to talk to everyone. I sort of hung out in the doorway as people entered the cocktail hour/reception space, kind of saying hello to people but not wanting to get too close, and my husband was getting pulled in other directions.


Granted, we also didn’t have dancing, so we clearly had some anxiety about mingling. I felt bad about not being able to talk to everyone, but they all got very genuine thank-you notes. Having them there did mean a lot, even if we couldn’t chat.
It’s ok to be hurt, but I wouldn’t hold it against them.

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Table greeting is a greeting. I didn't need a personal "We are so glad to see you specifically!" A table greeting would have been fine.

I get being disappointed, but I would just let it go. If I've learned anything from planning, it's that weddings are crazy, stressful, and often don't go the way you want or expect. It's very likely they didn't do it on purpose.