Guest List Etiquette Question: Do We Still Invite Them?

IMO if someone received a STD for a previous wedding date, they should receive one (or an invitation if not sending out new STD's) for the new date.... unless you are reducing your guest list. In that case, a notice of some kind to that person would be in order to let them know this. This has happened to us. We are on our third date and had to reduce our guest list by 75 people. It was hard to do but we notified people that we didn't envision having our special day without them but because of the ongoing pandemic our day will look different than we imagined. Also, do you have the most recent contact info for those guests. Their situation could have changed dramatically in the past year. Is there a friend or any other way in which to reach them?

Did you cancel your original wedding or postpone it?

If you canceled your event, the new wedding date is a new event and you can have an entirely different guest list. Technically if you postponed and told all of your guests the new date and nothing else changed, then everyone originally sent a STD should still be included, but if they are non-responsive when you try to communicate with them I think its fair to not send an invitation at this point. Also if you majorly changed your event in any way (new venue, significantly downsized, etc) I think its also fair to say its a different event with a different guest list.

If you feel like you don't have the right address anymore, I would say typically people who don't update you when all of their contact information changes probably don't consider you all that important to them. Its one thing to change just an address or phone number, but if they seem unreachable by all methods (snail mail, phone call, text, email, social media) they've dropped off the face of the planet or considered you not worthy of keeping in contact with.

We are in a somewhat similar boat. We canceled our wedding and eloped on our original date, but we did postpone all of our vendors right away, we just didn't announce the new date for our wedding celebration (mostly because I didn't believe it would actually happen). We did tell a number of people including all VIPs and people in the wedding, but never made an official announcement to all of our guests or posted the new date until just three months out. In our case our guest list changed very little but we did remove two couples, added three new people, lost one VIP guest to another wedding (they RSVP'd to that event before we confirmed our date), and there is one couple I no longer want to invite because I don't feel close to the friend anymore.

In the case of the one couple I want to no longer include but haven't completely stripped from our guest list, the person who is actually invited socially overlaps with some others who are invited, and I feel awkward saying "you haven't been a good friend in the past year and I don't see the point of having you at our wedding" even though that is how I feel at this point. I'm not friends with this person's partner, and this person is not friends with my husband at all. Last year, this was a person I hand delivered my invitation to and they were really excited about our wedding and offered to help out in any way; now they haven't even acknowledged our new date or anything that is going on in my life. Normally I would see them in person pretty regularly; I've tried to ask how they are doing, ask them to lunch outside on a nice day, try to connect, and they haven't responded at all, so I've pretty much decided if they don't reciprocate and we don't end up connecting in person they'll just never get their invitation. I'll fully admit its probably not the best way to handle that situation but the friendship feels really one sided at this point and using the "make time to acknowledge I'm trying to connect with you and salvage a relationship" litmus test feels more appropriate than just crossing them off the list based on our friendship over what has been a tough year for everyone. I feel like I'm trying to give them one last chance because in the past I have really enjoyed connecting with them but I just don't feel that bond any more.

In reality, in my adult life if I imagined having a wedding and making up a guest list of who I would invite, the list would change a bit every year, and rather significantly every 5 years or so. The people I was closest to at 20, 25, 30, and now 35 are entirely different groups of people with a small amount of overlap. I think its completely realistic for you to have different relationships now than you did two years ago and feel like your wedding day guest list can be adjusted to reflect that.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this 100%, I also made my guest list 2 years ago. At this point in our lives, our guest list feels “expired”. If so many rules can get bent because of Covid, so can guest lists - even if you don’t HAVE to eliminate people because of protocols. My FH and I have about 10 people we do not want to send our invitations to, and have added 4 more. They’re just simply not getting one, and the new invitees will. It is what it is, I’ve bent a lot in the last year because of this last pandemic, and I’m not afraid to stick to what I believe is the BEST for us moving forward.

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Absolutely! The two couples we removed we removed because we weren't super close to them to begin with AND we just don't feel like they are taking Covid as seriously as us and our other guests are. They were low priority invitees to begin with, and while we would probably have a ton of fun with them we just don't feel it is worth risking the safety of everyone else to include people who have been traveling a bunch, going out and partying, and generally not being as cautious us and the rest of our guests. We have high risk parents and it would feel really disingenuous to have all of these layers of protection in place so they can enjoy our event safely and then just invite people who haven't been cautious this whole time.