Not inviting non covid vaccinated family...

Rather than not inviting unvaccinated individuals, I think I would send everybody an invitation, but include a details card that specifies you will be requiring ALL guests attending to be vaccinated (Or if you would accept a negative test within 24 hours of the wedding instead of being vaccinated, you could include that information as well). I think this would go over much better with your guests and would be less likely to offend anyone or start drama. By inviting them but laying out the rules, you are not excluding them from your event, but rather are allowing them to choose whether they would like to abide by the rules and attend, or decline attending.

View Quoted Comment Oh thats a good idea...thank you! Good way of putting it!

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I ****% came here to say this. Invite everyone but have mandates with no exceptions. Then it is not you excluding them but rather them choosing not to come.

I love the idea of asking people to bring a negative test if they aren't vaccinated.

I might even ask the vaccinated to do that if you have really strong feelings about it.

Seems like EVERYONE is positive these days.

Just my two cents.

I agree with others... invite everyone that was on your original list, but just include a note saying the requirements. Some people that are unvaccinated may choose to get vaccinated to attend or might want to send well wishes if not. and this way you avoid hurting any feelings.

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I second this! Straight up not inviting unvaccinated people is going to invite potential ugliness, no matter how adamant you are. We only had one unvaccinated adult that we knew was coming - my dad's girlfriend - and we told my dad that she would need a negative test otherwise. The only other unvaccinated people at our wedding were our flower girls and ring bearers, and that was because their vaccine hadn't been released yet. The ring bearers were 5 and 3, and the flower girls (my nieces) were 8 and 7.

Everyone always wants to courtesy of being invited, but the also have the option of accepting or politely declining. I learned this when one of my cousins invited me, my direct family members, and only a quarter of my mother’s side of the family + her husband-to-be’s side to the church wedding ceremony & reception lunch.


There were definitely hurt feelings I didn’t expect from people I thought were way more mature, Needless to say, you still have time to send out more invitations if you can manage the costs.

I'm personally adding a little card inside my invites when they go out that says something along the lines of "we respectfully require that all guests be fully vaccinated against covid-19". I only know of a single person (so far) on our guest list who is unvaccinated and I've already told my fiancé that I will accept a negative test from the day before or morning of but thats a very specific case and that this person has a year to prepare and really should be vaxxed.

My coworker got married back in August of 2021, he also included a card like that. They had a very small amount of people tell him they were refusing to get vaccinated (and he and his wife in turn respectfully asked them not to attend in that case). He had a large outdoor wedding (almost 200 people) and not a single person got sick because we were all vaxxed.

It's hard navigating the world of who to invite and who not to (and not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings) but don't forget its also your wedding. And if you don't feel comfortable having unvaccinated people attend, it's your right to respectfully request that they not attend.

I mandated vaccines to attend my wedding and I’m so glad I did. It bought a lot of peace of mind and no one got sick! This was before omicron, so at this point, even if you mandate a vaccine sadly there are so guarantees that people won’t get sick. I am very fortunate that no one important in either my or my husband’s family or our close friends didn’t get vaccinated. In fact, most of my family wouldn’t have come if I didn’t mandate vaccines. I did get some friends say they weren’t vaccinated and couldn’t come but it wasn’t a lot and they weren’t anyone that important to me.

Oh and I still sent out invites but the vaccine mandate was on my wedding. I don’t think you should just not invite people who aren’t vaccinated because there is a chance for that to change (for example one of the groomsmen got vaccinated in the months before the wedding at the behest of my husband and his pregnant gf). Also I did have 9 unvaxxed kids at my wedding bc it wasn’t available to them at the time.