Who gets a Plus 1? Did you invite kids as well?

We did not allow children to be included at our wedding ceremony or reception firstly because they are a huge distraction secondly because they are an unnecessary expense. Where we are getting married we are at 10% occupancy so the children would’ve taken away from the adults we would’ve been able to invite. We also did not allow +ones because of the Covid restrictions if you are getting married at a time that you think the restrictions will be eased it is customary to include a plus one with every ‘single’ person that you invite.

View Quoted Comment Completely agree with this! Every married person and every person in a relationship (no matter how long they have been together, or how “serious” you feel the relationship is) should have their significant others invited. As far as people who are not in a relationship at the time invitations go out, that is up to your discretion whether you would like to give them a plus one or not. We will definitely be extending plus ones to all single guests, because we know if it was us we would like that option.

For our plus ones, anyone who is married or in a relationship got a plus one. A couple people who are in on again off again relationships didn't get a plus one because I don't want a random person at my wedding. If they really want to bring someone, they can ask us. We have made it very clear that we are not inviting kids (that would be an extra 25+ people!). We added this information to our wedding website, word of mouth and on the invitation inner envelope, it will be very specific as to who is invited. We adding one of the two phrases to the RSVP card: ___ number of seats have been reserved in your honor or ___ of 2 attending. The only two kids at the wedding will be my nieces who are our flower girls.

View Quoted Comment 100% agreed. I hate when people judge whether a relationship is serious or not, or have a policy where the person has to be engaged or married only.

"Plus Ones" only apply to truly single people (i.e. John Smith + Guest). Married couples and people in a committed relationship are social units and should be invited together - this is not a Plus One scenario. We only have a handful of truly single people on our guest list, so are allowing all of them to bring a Plus One if they want to.

A plus one is for truly single guests. Anyone who is in a relationship should be invited with their significant other by name. Whether your event is kid friendly or not is entirely up to you. If you decide to do an adult-only event, it's best to do all or nothing. Picking some kids and not others can cause more problems down the line. The same can be said about plus ones: you want to have a blanket rule for them rather rather picking and choosing, unless it's like...bridal party and those traveling from out of state.

Plus ones are only for truly single guests. Significant others are not plus ones: they are a package deal. We did not include plus ones at our wedding, but we obviously invited the spouses and significant others of all guests by name. It was not up to us to judge the seriousness of a relationship. Whether the couple was married for 10 years or dating for 3 months, every person in a relationship got to bring their partner. I agree with PPs it's best to have a blanket rule when it comes to plus ones (and kids): all or none.

A plus one is a random stranger who doesn't care about you and will never see you again. A significant other, whether together 4 months or 50 years is an automatic invite. It doesn't matter if you haven't met them.

I have attended weddings for years and never once was given a plus one, nor was I unable to enjoy myself because I knew other people there. Even when I only knew the bride or groom, I still had a great time. Based on that, we will not be giving anyone a plus one.

Weddinngs in our families are family events so all ages are invited. It's easier for us to invite kids. Luckily the majority are very well behaved so we are not worried. In my family, if kids are not invited, you would not be welcome at any future events.

You can do this completely how you want to!!
We had to downsize so we were very selective with our plus ones. We kind of had a rule that we wanted to know everyone at our wedding personally and didn’t want to just have random people coming as plus ones - that’s because we had to do away with 70% of our guest list.
We are giving everyone a plus one who is married, or even in very serious relationships. And we aren’t having kids at the wedding. We’ve just been sure to be clear on the invitations who we are saving a seat for. Luckily for us, we have kind of explained this to most of our guests so no one is questioning the children thing!You can absolutely tailor this to your wedding and do whatever you feel you want for your big day!

We are having a kid free wedding so parents could have fun without having to take care of their little ones. And also cause it's expensive and we are limited with guests. Mostly every guest has a spouse or significant other. We only granted 3 plus ones for FH college friends from Mississippi (we're in NYC). Only because they're coming all this way and are staying a couple days.

Married couples and serious relationships (de-facto or long term) are a package deal - everyone of our guests who has a significant other has been invited alongside their significant other. We are only giving plus ones to the single friends who know absolutely no one else just so they feel more comfortable.

No kids!

View Quoted Comment Perfect, now did you necessarily have any kids outside of your flower girls that you considered inviting? So to phrase it another way, had they not been your flower girls would they have been invited?

View Quoted Comment Yes I’m in NYC too, have you heard of the updated guidelines on wedding reception capacity?! It’s exciting.

View Quoted Comment There weren’t any other kids we would have invited. If my nieces weren’t my flowers girls, I think they’d still be invited. But it never even crossed my mind for them not to be flower girls!

We’re only having 100 people attend our wedding but those that have significant others are allowed to bring them as their plus one. For anyone who is married, they’re getting their own invite either way. We’re also inviting kids because my fiancé and I have our 7 year old son and are expecting our daughter this coming June so they’ll have a few cousins to play with

I literally just went through the same thing! Originally we were inviting all kids and everyone could have a plus one. Unfortunately, we had to cut down our guest list significantly so we aren’t inviting any kids which narrowed it down by 7. As far as plus ones the majority of our guests are married so we invited their spouses. As far as our non-married guests I gave my three friends plus one’s. We have hung out with all of their significant others a lot so it would be weird not to invite them. However, two of my cousins are single and they might be in a relationship but since they have never mentioned it to me and we have not spent time with them we aren’t giving them a plus one. We are very limited on space so unless we know 100% that they have a significant other then the invite is only for them.

We included kids, but we love kids, and a lot of our friends had just started their families. (Including some of them that had SURPRISE twins, so they have a nanny, whom we hired to help out with the kiddos during the wedding.) But we seem to be the exception.

For plus-ones, we really went with the basic concept of: couples are a social unit.

That said - if you were close enough to us to be invited to the wedding, we KNEW your SO. If you were invited to the wedding and suddenly complained about your SO not being invited... um, who is this SO we *have not met*? (TWO people in the BP tried to pull this, including the best man who wanted to bring someone we'd never met to the *rehearsal dinner*. DH basically said, "are you really bringing this up 2 days before the wedding???)

Then again, we had a super short engagement, so we did feel comfortable drawing that line on plus 1s.

We're only having one child, which is my nephew and he will be included in the ceremony. He's the only child invited as I'm positive his parents would not attend if he were not invited as all their trusted baby sitters will be at the wedding.

Everyone in the Bridal Party gets a plus one, as well as anyone in a committed relationship or married. The only person who's in a relationship that is not getting a plus one is my FH's cousin, her fiance and my FH do not get a long, and he is not someone we entirely like (she is fully aware that he will not be invited) as he is not someone I want in attendance on the happiest day of my life.

View Quoted Comment We’re doing the same thing too! We have fairly big families so it’s hard to just extend a +1 invite to all of our friends. We’re obviously still inviting people who are engaged or married, and a lot of our close friends’ significant others, but we are strictly limiting +1’s to people we already have met at least once. We figured that if this person was so close to us then we would have met them prior to the wedding anyway.

As far as kids go though that’s a personal preference. I opted not to invite kids to the reception. You might lose some guests but I feel like a lot of parents might also appreciate the night off and enjoy themselves more without having to worry about their kids