Wedding Invites Sent Only to Family's Female Relatives

[purlewe]

DEAR ABBY: My niece is getting married this spring, which has created a dilemma for my immediate family. When the save-the-date cards went out, she addressed them only to the women in the family. We thought it was a mistake at first, but now the invitations have arrived, and they are also addressed to the women only.

My husband and my son (her first cousin) feel slighted. My son's wife was invited, but she doesn't know the bride at all. It seems the bride has a limited number of guests she can invite for the venue. She also has a large number of friends and the groom's family attending.

Out of respect for my son and my husband -- and a son-in-law who was also excluded -- we all will respond that we will not attend. I feel terrible not being able to see my niece walk down the aisle, but I'm not used to my spouse being ignored. Am I doing the right thing? -- PUZZLED IN FLORIDA

DEAR PUZZLED: Before you refuse the wedding invitation, call your niece and ask if she is intentionally excluding the men. Because women make most of the social arrangements, she may not have realized that each guest's name must appear on the invitation. Rather than an attempt to exclude family members because their chromosomes are not the same as hers, this may simply have been an etiquette boo-boo.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I need more hands to facepalm with.

[melannen]

Agreed. Here, have another one.

[dine]

you can use this one if you'd like

[raine]

That seems incredibly gracious and weird at the same time. Who addresses invitations only to the women? What century are we living in?
I mean, maybe the bride got weird advice from someone, somewhere, but still - to only the women?

[azurelunatic]

It looks like there's a font color set here, which is not working well with the dark site skin.

[purlewe]

Let me know if it is fixed now.

[azurelunatic]

Yup, perfectly! Thank you!

[gingicat]

This honestly seems like a mail merge issue.

[redbird]

The only way I can make sense of this is that the bride (a) believes all of a (heterosexual) married couple's social engagements are made by the woman, and (b) takes for granted that everyone else will understand that if she invites Mary Smith, Mary's husband Mike is also included. That's still weird, but less weird than "I'm not inviting my cousin, and I am inviting his wife who I don't know."

That feels like the same sort of oddity as someone parsing the statement "redbird came over for dinner" to mean that both cattitude and I went, a real thing that surprised me a couple of weeks ago.

[purlewe]

One of the reasons I posted this was bc I did something.. slightly, similar. I only invited people I knew. If I had never met your husband (and we have been friends over 15 years) then no, I did not invite your husband to the wedding. We only invited 80 people and of the 80 people invited we only invited one person we had never met. (the fiance of someone who had already invited us to their wedding 3 months later) My basis for this was that we had been together 10 years... and we didn't invite people who had never seen us together or who we hadn't seen in the 10 years we were together (cousins, partners of friends who we only interact with at events once a year, partners of coworkers) Everyone who was invited was not invited in a vacuum. There were folks who I only saw at yarn events 2xs a year that would all club together and coworkers who would all sit together etc. My wife has over 20 aunts and uncles alone, inviting all their children (who my wife hadn't seen in over 20 years and I had never met) seemed ridiculous. We did get flak for it. Aunt so and so called to ask where her kids and her grandkids invites were and we simply said they were not invited. Aunt so and so came tho.

That being said ONLY inviting the women? and women you have never met of a couple? that seems... odd.

My MIL got VERY upset that we sent out open house invites (we had an open house instead of a rehearsal dinner so that people could meet and greet folks the night before the wedding and make friends) with only first names on the postcard. "How will the postman know if it was being delivered correctly?" Was WAAAAY more upsetting to her.

[resonant]

Person: [does something that requires explanation]

Letter writer: Hell no! You have disrespected me and my entire extended family! Feud between my blood and yours unto the hundredth generation!

[jadelennox]

lolol.

also this is 50% of the advice industry.

[resonant]

And the other 50% is: "Dear letter writer, you are going to have to say No to someone."

[jadelennox]

I MUST KNOW MORE.

[tielan]

...why doesn't anyone ask the bride her intentions?