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ask amy: going firm
Dear Amy: My son and his fiance sent out save-the-date cards, invitations and then made phone calls to people who did not RSVP to their wedding invitation.
Now it is one week until the wedding, and my brother and his wife (who said they could NOT attend) have changed their minds.
Everything is complete: seating charts, food ordered and paid for, and hotels rooms are no longer available. The wedding is in a small mountain town.
My son and his fiance have everything in order and planned the whole wedding. I feel they don't need the stress of last-minute changes.
When I called my son, I could feel the tension in his voice and I told him I would handle letting my brother know it is not possible at this late date to add to the guest list.
I feel bad but my brother had three months to decide — and declined (after he was called).
Should I have paid more money to cover the cost of adding him? Should I have pressed my son to fit him in and add to his stress?
— FOG (father of the groom)
FOG: Last-minute changes are an unfortunate but inevitable part of any planned event.
Your brother announced he would like to attend, but there is also a likelihood that another guest or two wouldn’t be able to make it at the last minute. This is why many couples handle their seating at the very last minute, but hosts can’t be responsible for providing a last-minute hotel room.
The ultimate decision should rest with the couple.
Now it is one week until the wedding, and my brother and his wife (who said they could NOT attend) have changed their minds.
Everything is complete: seating charts, food ordered and paid for, and hotels rooms are no longer available. The wedding is in a small mountain town.
My son and his fiance have everything in order and planned the whole wedding. I feel they don't need the stress of last-minute changes.
When I called my son, I could feel the tension in his voice and I told him I would handle letting my brother know it is not possible at this late date to add to the guest list.
I feel bad but my brother had three months to decide — and declined (after he was called).
Should I have paid more money to cover the cost of adding him? Should I have pressed my son to fit him in and add to his stress?
— FOG (father of the groom)
FOG: Last-minute changes are an unfortunate but inevitable part of any planned event.
Your brother announced he would like to attend, but there is also a likelihood that another guest or two wouldn’t be able to make it at the last minute. This is why many couples handle their seating at the very last minute, but hosts can’t be responsible for providing a last-minute hotel room.
The ultimate decision should rest with the couple.
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On a second read it looks like the uncle may have contacted the groom about changing his answer, and the dad may have been calling for a perfectly normal father-son conversation and offered to take handling his brother off the groom's hands. BUT IF I'M WRONG ABOUT THAT, I am judging you, FOG.
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ugh.
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So it can go really well! I was surprised by how well it went.
We were last-minute substitutions. It was a destination wedding, three of the family guests got sick, and my bros and I were in San Francisco within driving distance.
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I've worked for a caterer before and gosh the seating charts make life so much easier for allergen purposes.
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I can totally believe that of him. He was and doubtless continues to be a sweetheart.
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Mostly, it's a case of "make sure the people who know each other are seated together" with a side of "make sure the relatives at war with each other aren't near each other" and the added fillip of "make sure the people who are seated at tables where they don't know anyone are capable of conversing with people they don't know".
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This might be me over-romanticising. I've been to two kinds of weddings: ones in my childhood, which were very formal Christian affairs, with seating charts and lots of tension, and weddings since I grew up, which were very informal (a couple had potlucks) and so on.
The middle ground was my favorite ex's wedding, where they assigned tables but not seats, and he put me and his other exes at Table 13. laugh
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The too-late acceptances can't (surely?) be expecting the bride and groom (or the groom and groom, who knows with spellings these days) to run around finding them a hotel room. So it's hard to see how they could possibly attend, even if someone else cannot make it at the last minute for whatever reason.
I think the letter writer did well to take on the job of telling the errant brother it was too late to change the arrangements, and he is otherwise overthinking this. Nope, no need to accommodate someone who couldn't decide if he wanted to attend his own nephew's wedding until a few days beforehand.
On those seating charts, though - I am very much in favour of them. Because I can just imagine attending a wedding where I didn't know anyone except the bride/groom, and not knowing where to sit amidst a crowd of strangers. Some of whom would be taking chairs off the spare table so as to squeeze in with their friend group, others of whom would probably stare in outrage at these interlopers tentatively gesturing towards the spare seats.... As a guest who doesn't have the natural gift of making friends instantly, I'd love to have the people who actually *know* their guests try to figure out who should get on with whom.
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