Inviting guests who didn’t invite you to their wedding

I'd invite friends/family that we want to have share our day without any regard to past invitations or not. Different people host events differently and that's fine.

That didn't really go into our guest list thought process. Friendships change throughout the year, people have different budgets, etc. so we just invited those we wanted there and didn't think about if they invited us to past parties/weddings/etc. I guess if it was someone that excluded us for every single event and we never saw that, but they invited basically everyone else besides us, that would be different but we probably wouldn't be friends with someone like that already so we wouldn't consider inviting them?

It didn't even cross my mind to consider whether or not we were invited to someone's wedding before inviting them to ours. I completely understand budget and capacity restrictions so this wouldn't change my decision at all.

If you care for then and have the resources, just invite them. This is your wedding, not lunch with coworkers where you take turns picking up the tab. 😂

We are just inviting people we want to share the day with. For example, a (former) coworker got married a couple of years ago. We didn't know each other too well then and I wasn't at her wedding (nor did I expect to be). We have a lot of mutual friends and are often hanging out together in a group now so she and her husband will be invited to our wedding.

Guestlists to different weddings are COMPLETELY unrelated and shouldn’t be a factor. Invite who you want.

Everyone has a different set of factors determining their own guestlists and it is very rarely personal. Have the wedding you want with the guestlist you want.

Anecdotally— we had a very strict cap on our guestlist— not a small wedding, but we physically didn’t have the space (or the money frankly) to host more than 150 guests. So we both had to make some sacrifices and not invite every single person we wanted to celebrate with. And we were really trying to keep things even (I have a HUGE family and his is quite small, so I wanted to be very careful not to dominate the guestlist). Because of this I had to draw some very distinct lines and there was a small section of family I cut— not personal, we’re just not *as* close , except for 1 or 2 cousins out of a group of about 10, and to me it was a bit over complicated to invite 2 cousins who I grew up with but exclude their siblings who I hardly know and frankly wouldn’t be able to pick out of a crowd . So I drew a line there. Well then one of those cousins got engaged. For her, a priority was to invite ALL the cousins— so we got an invite ! We just went, and were SO thrilled to be able to go and celebrate with them and catch up a bit. And they were so excited and thankful we could make it!! And all was happy and wonderful and there was nothing weird or awkward about us having not invited them. We were all happy and excited and had a wonderful time celebrating

I didn't really consider this. I think if you've room and want them there, go for it

Wouldn't change my decision at all. I never thought about it when selecting our guests.

We got invited to 2 weddings next year and don't have either of the couples on our list. We feel kind of bad about it, but obviously they also didn't take into consideration that they aren't coming to ours- which is great!

For us, I wasn't invited to my uncle's wedding because apparently his wife (has a huge family) was controlling the guest list quite a bit and they couldn't go over 250 people. I was really upset at the time and got over it. For me now, the one getting married, he and his entire household are invited, because I genuinely want them there and I'm budgeting for it. It truly depends on circumstances, in my opinion.

We invited a couple to our wedding whom we did not attend theirs. We became acquainted with them during their wedding planning so it was too late to add us to their guest list. No harm no foul.

View Quoted Comment A few friends of ours had small intimate weddings which we weren't invited to and we didn't hold it against them. However, if I were excluded by a friend or family member from their 200+ person wedding, I'd be a little miffed like Andrea was.

Didn’t really think much about this but especially if it’s because they had a smaller wedding I wouldn’t think twice about it. We only are friends with 2 other married couples, one who’s wedding we attended, and the other had a destination wedding with family only plus literally 1 friend each which we were not invited to... we wouldn’t even have thought about excluding them from our 100 person wedding just because we weren’t their top #1 best friend who attended theirs lol.

If people have specific budgets for their wedding and can’t invite a lot of people, i respect that because we all know how expensive weddings can be. I don’t think that should be a factor if you invite them or not. Invite people that you want at your wedding, it is a special day and you should invite the people who mean the most to you.

Thank you for all your insights. They have been very helpful!

I don't think it's awkward at all. Different couples have different budgets, and if you want them to be at your wedding and you have the budget to invite them, then you should. Whether or not they invited you shouldn't have much of an impact imo.