Plus Ones/significant Others: what is your criteria for inviting?

For our friends, it's easy to make the distinction because everyone is either in a very long relationship (7+ years) or single. Unfortunately our parents have different criteria for their list. My mom seems to think her 50-something friends are more entitled to bring a random person.

I was in a relationship for 5 years, amd my brother said my SO wasn't invited, was a power grab. Caused serious drama we have since severed ties as time has gone on. There's a reason etiquette is generally followed. We will be absolutely extending a plus 1 at our wedding, even though we have to carefully watch our numbers.

View Quoted Comment Exactly! We wanted to make sure no one felt uncomfortable, lonely, left out, etc. We would rather foot the bill for a few additional meals than have any of our guests feel that way. Because 5 years from now we aren’t going to be sitting around mad that we decided to accommodate our guests. But I guarantee a guest is always going to remember the time their date wasn’t deemed “worthy” of an invite.

For our wedding, we invited everyone's SO except for one person and gave everyone a plus one except for a few people. My husband's aunt and her two adult daughters were an exception because they didn't have the money to bring someone with them. The one daughter is married, but she specifically reached out to us after we sent the STD and said we didn't need to include her husband on the invite because he works almost every weekend and even if he could get off they didn't have the extra money for him to come. My mother-in-law actually covered some of the costs for the aunt and two daughters to attend since they originally told her they probably wouldn't have attended and she really wanted them to be able to attend. We also didn't allow my husband's two other cousins to bring a plus one. Both have a history of drug/alcohol abuse and neither were in relationships and we didn't want them bringing some random person who would likely have been questionable at best to our wedding. I was very glad we made this decision because the one cousin told his mom (my husband's aunt) a week before the wedding he wasn't attending but by then we already paid for him to attend. The other cousin showed up to our wedding either intoxicated or high or both to our wedding then disappeared for over an hour during our reception.

I've struggled with this a little and have recently decided that our own rule is a relationship of one year or more. Of course though, this will be examined on a case-by-case basis to ensure that we aren't excluding significant others of less than a year.

We will be inviting the significant other (i.e. the invitation will be addressed to them too) and the only 'plus guest' invitations will be a handful given to those who are travelling for the wedding and are single as it is our out-of-towners who don't know anyone else who will be there.

We invited the significant others of everyone in a relationship, regardless of how long they'd been together. Not our place to judge the seriousness of other people's relationships. We didn't include random plus ones.

Plus ones for all of the 18+ guests (regardless of the length of the relationship- I can't stand any "ring no bring" BS sorry). I think about how I would feel being invited to a wedding without a plus one and honestly (depending on who/where) I am less likely to attend.

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THIS! 100%

When doing invites in made to include the persons significant other wether married or not. If I knew you were in a relationship then your other half was invited as. But if I didn’t know then they only got an invite for them selfs. No plus ones were given unless they talked to me about it. I would check to see where guest count was. However I only had to do this one time. Do what you can that fits your budget

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Same here We just want people to be happy, as we feel the worst outcome at our wedding would be guests feeling lonely/sad. I went to a wedding alone once having had a boyfriend for 3 months (the bride didn't consider it serious enough). I felt lonely the whole time and in a weird way, kinda unfaithful on behalf of my boyfriend knowing I was representing myself as a 'single person' even though we were already very much in love. Had to awkwardly decline being chatted up by single guys towards the end. Fwiw, he's now my fiancee and we've been together almost 5 years! You just never know how serious a relationship is based purely on timeframes, IMO.

View Quoted Comment Yes! This is exactly my point! You still remember that person’s wedding as “that wedding”. We do NOT want to be “that wedding” for any of our guests. I know people like to say oh so-and-so will be fine attending alone because they know other people there. But that doesn’t mean those people they know what to be their babysitter all night. Like another responder pointed out, single people tend to glom onto others, which likely isn’t desirable for either party involved. And if the people they know were lucky enough to have their significant others deemed “worthy” to attend, then it makes it even more awkward and lonely. No way- never putting our guests in that situation. These are people we love and respect. And as far as “some people like attending alone”- then they can choose to decline the plus one. Same goes for if they do not think the relationship they are in is serious enough to bring that person to a wedding-they can simply decline. It’s just not up to FH and I to decide other people’s comfort level or the seriousness of their relationships.

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I really respect the sentiment here! We chose to apply the same logic and just cut costs in other areas. I still remember how awkward it was to explain to my then-boyfriend, now-husband that he hadn't been included on the invitation to my friend's out-of-state wedding (even though the wedding was literally on our 1 year dating anniversary, and the couple knew we were dating seriously). I obviously declined the invitation and spent our anniversary weekend with him.

View Quoted Comment Ugh, and it was even out of state?! This just screams inconsiderate.

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Girl, yes! And I felt like a real....butt....for assuming he would be invited - I had been talking up how much fun it would be for *us* to attend their wedding and also take a road trip on our anniversary weekend! I had to put my foot directly in my mouth haha. I really didn't want any of our guests to have that very uncomfortable experience / emotion!!

View Quoted Comment That stinks! How awkward! And I’m sure your bf felt incredibly left out and devalued from the lack of invite. I think the fact that you had just naturally assumed he would be invited, shows that most people view inviting SOs and plus ones as common place etiquette.

I'm in the minority on this one but our rule is a relationship of 6+ months.
I agree that it's not our place to judge the seriousness of other relationships, my partner and I are not judging anything ... but it's our place to make a rule. So: Take it or leave it.
However: Nobody will feel alone because everybody on our guest list know at least 3 other guests! My coworkers know each other, my cousins know each other, my partner's cousins know each other, her coworkers know each other, my friends know each other, we are in the "same circle", same about my FW's friends and our parent's friends.

Everyone in a relationship is invited as a unit. We're only giving plus ones to the bridal party.

So we are absolutely inviting any single bridal party members with plus one. We only have two as of now so it's not a huge add to our budget/guest count, and a nice gesture considering how much time/money you spend being in someone's wedding.

My personal feeling on this is that I wanted to give everyone a plus one, because when my single friends get married they'll HAVE to invite me with my husband. I was fairly adamant about doing this until my fiance discovered he had forgotten a few "must-invites" for his family from his list. We were already at the upper limit of our guest count, so I had to relinquish this one. Right now we're just not allowing our totally single friends to bring a date, unless they're traveling in for our wedding or don't know anyone else at the wedding. If they're in a relationship, regardless of length, they can bring their SO.

For us, everyone who has an SO (spouse, fiance(e), official bf/gf, or newly dating) is invited with their SO so long as they were together by the time invitations went out. For the truly single people, those were determined on a case by case basis. Those who would know other guests did not receive a plus one, while those who wouldn't know other guests did get a plus one. (Example: My coworker who is a good friend but has only met my FH once and wouldn't know any other guests there did get a plus one. A friend of both FH and mine who is in the motorcycle community we're part of did not get a plus one as he will know many other guests there.)