Is it weird to invite parents of a family friend you grew up with, but not the friend you grew up with?

I tend to stick to the notion of “if they invited me I invite them” rule myself unless it is a friendship that I don’t really care to lose if I don’t invite them. In this scenario I think considering they invited you and the parents are being invited, it would be ideal to invite both couples or none.

I am inviting my ex-best friend’s mother. My ex-best friend decided to ghost me and never speak to me again (literally out of the blue) and I’ve kept in touch with her mother since (we always got along really well and the mother thought her daughter was a complete idiot for her actions) and I’m inviting her without her daughter for obvious reasons.

I would invite them and the parents. Two additional people isn’t much and his estranged friend cared about their formerly close relationship enough to invite you guys to his wedding. Maybe this can rekindle their friendship. If their relationship is in good standing, albeit distant, not inviting them may sour whatever is left.

That is definitely an awkward situation. At the end of the day it’s your wedding together do what makes you both happy. With that being said I think it boils down to if your husbands friend is mad or upset with you both for inviting the parents but not him. If you care then absolutely invite the parents and the friend. If you don’t care then only invite the parents. Personally I would just invite all 4 because it’s possible not all 60 guest are going to come so an additional two wouldn’t be a huge difference. Hope this helps

I am also planning to invite my ex-best friend's parents.

Lots of drama involved in my friend and I's falling out, but I'm still pretty close to her mom (who was like a second/third mom to me growing up) and she's like another grandparent to my daughter.

I think in this case it's at the request of your parents, but honestly I'd probably tell your parents that with the intimate nature of the event you're trying to plan you can't include these friend's parents and cut your loses all together.

Not weird at all. If your parents have a number of people they are allowed to invite, then you shouldn't dictate who they go to. But besides that, no it's not weird.

Not odd at all. Especially if your FH's parents are contributing financially and the family friends are their guests. My mom asked to invite 6 people not originally on our guest list (also a small wedding about 50 people) since she and my dad are paying for our wedding. If your FH doesn't care for the childhood friend but is really close to the parents than this might be a good excuse to invite people he wanted without the added obligation of his old friend who you are not close with.

Not weird, we have invited people whom I have been estranged from for years but still see the life updates on Facebook. As long as everyone is happy with who they invite it's not a big deal!

Not weird, this was actually a situation for my parents and me. I grew up with this girl and we were really close when we were younger. But we grew apart. My mom remained best friends with her mom and kept in touch with both her and her mom. They even went on to work in the same building together. So this girl invited my parents to her wedding, but she didn't invite me. I wasn't hurt by it at all because my parents stayed more in touch with her and her family than I did. I thought it was really nice that they still got included. So I see no issue with this.

Nope not weird at all! My old friends family is coming to mine but not the old friend.

I don't think so. I'm doing that very thing. I'm friendly with the parents (same as my parents), but not their children (who were friends throughout school), so I'm going to invite them to the wedding. This is YOUR wedding, invite who you want!

You do you. Personally I find it weird, but we don't plan to invite people we no longer communicate with regularly. If we had married younger, then they would have been on the guest list but they aren't involved in our lives now so no invites to them or parents.

Invites do not have to be reciprocal and there are many cases where they aren't.

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I agree! My FH and I are doing a similar thing, any couple that has invited us to their day, we have reciprocated the invitation to ours (barring any major fallouts, which thankfully, hasn't happened). I could see the parents getting hurt feelings if they are invited, but their son isn't even though he invited you to his wedding.

Unless there was a major issue or falling out between your FH and the friend, I would just invite them to avoid any hurt feelings (best case scenario, they RSVP no and you get your original number of 60!)

If you are trying to keep it intimate and small and you guys aren't really close with either the parents or their kids, then I wouldn't waste the space on any of them if im being honest. I'd be hurt to find out that my friends whom I invited to my wedding, invited my parents but not me to their wedding even though my parents aren't really that much closer to these people. Just because they invited you doesn't mean you have to invite them though. I don't think you should invite any of them or invite all of them.

My parents have been to the weddings of numerous friends of mine from growing up years, whom I stopped seeing sometime 16-28 when I left my home town area , who themselves were away much of the same times. My parents were those parents, always a door open, and I knew my friends visited after I was gone, ran into them sometimes when I was on holiday visits and them to their families, and they came over. So itis no surprise to hear news they heard fr or are going to theses weddings. I thought is a small town or rural thing, til I found out my hubby's mother is that mother in their Brooklyn neighborhood.Hos parents are in touch with a huge number of his old friends, and maintain ed friends with a lot of parents of people they originally knew as hubby's friend's parents.

Yikes. I think it might be awkward since you were friends with the kids at some point.

I'm sure they will understand, given that it's not gonna be a big wedding. You should focus more on inviting people you want to be there on the day of your wedding.

Thank you all for the advice!! Comforting to hear that many of you had the same debate with your friends/family and who should make the cut on the guest list. Great to hear perspectives from both sides. We still aren't sure what we're going to do, but we'll shelf it for another day and push on with the planning in the meantime!

I haven't read through the responses, but I think that it's perfectly fine. There are a few families that I grew up with and just over time, drifted from their children. They're all lovely people, I enjoy it when I bump into them every few years, and wish them all the absolute best, but we just don't keep in touch outside of an occasional social media interaction or like I said, bump into each other.

My parents however are still very close with the parents in these families, they're some of their best friends! So as the hosts of my wedding, it was important to them to include these couples and honestly, I loved having them there. Their children absolutely understood and we weren't invited to one another's weddings either. You can't invite everyone and I believe adults truly do understand.