...huh?

[ysobel]

Dear Miss Manners: My son is getting married next year to a lovely person with whom I have a good relationship. They are currently perusing venues, although they are unsure how many guests they will invite. Would it be poor manners to send them a possible guest list for my son’s side, with tiers of importance — such as aunts/uncles, then cousins, and so on — so they can see what they’re in for if they move to the next tier?

My husband says they should just invite whom they feel closest to, but I see a problem with that — for example, if they choose three cousins but not all five. My heart tells me it is their wedding and they can do what they want, but I’m not sure I can deal with the fallout of hurt feelings for the next 20 years if they decide to be choosy.


To whom did your husband offer his advice? If it was only meant for you — as a way of saying that the time for parental advice has passed — Miss Manners must disagree with him.

If it was meant for your son, then we instead disagree on what constitutes good parental advice. Your son should be warned, if he does not already know, that you will not be the only one who has to listen to 20 years of hurt feelings if he distributes invitations capriciously. As to ranking the relatives, this is best done verbally; if such a list were to be written down and inadvertently forwarded, 20 years would be a light sentence for the resulting storm.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Well, does a wedding belong to, say, the two people getting married, or are they merely an excuse and conduit for a family-reaffirming celebration which ultimately has very little to do with the actual marrying couple? Also, has the best man sharpened his sword recently and at what risk is the bride for being kidnapped?

[full_metal_ox]

For future consideration, if the couple plan to have children: does their household include spindles and/or rose hedges?

[minoanmiss]

splorf

[ysobel]

...IMO it's one thing to have a discussion about family dynamics, but they're whole-ass adults. They don't need parental dictations.

[melannen]

I feel like this is the case where there is a very easy answer, and it's you write to your son and ask if he wants any help with navigating family dynamics around the guest lists.

[redbird]

Yes, this. But "would you like to know which of these people are your first cousins?" or "do you need contact iformation for any of your relatives?" are different from "would you like a list of relatives in priority order?"

As a practical matter, they should probably wait until they know whether this is even a question: how many relatives do the son and his intended plan to invite? There's no point getting into an argument about whether the people getting married can invite only some of their aunts, if they have already decided not to invite any.

[melannen]

Well, what LW is asking is if she should give them advice as part of the process of deciding how large a venue they need, and I can kind of see the point? Like if I invite only my closest relatives, I need maybe a dozen invites. If I want to extend it to the next tier, which is everyone with a standing invite to family Christmas, I need about seventy-five at this point. So it would be awkward if I got a venue with room for thirty! And if I was trying to pick between two otherwise equivalent venues it would be useful to consider.

Like it's quite likely Son also knows the family well enough to do the math himself, or else does not care because he's more interested in seeing friends than if second cousins are mad, but I don't see the harm in offering at this point. As long as you're offering, not dictating!

[lannamichaels]

I assume the son knows he has cousins. He does not need the reminder.

[azurelunatic]

I keep forgetting about my Regrettable Uncle's kids, but to be fair I wouldn't invite any of them to my wedding if I had one.

[cimorene]

But what I thought was so weird was the LW thinking he might invite only some of the first cousins and needed to be told that might start a feud. I guess...? But like if someone is so disconnected from their family, or from how hurt feelings work, that they won't be able to think of that, surely they must be neuroatypical in some way and at least less likely to notice or mind the ensuing grudge.

[melannen]

I think it depends on how good communication in the family is (and how large it is) in general. My mother is hooked in to the family gossip much, much more than I am; I know who nearly all the first cousins are and have reasonably good relationships with most of them where we speak at least a couple times a year, but I live several states away from the town where everybody else still is and could not tell you what relationships they all have to each other, and whether Aunt L would be super offended if I invited Uncle J's ex-stepkids but not Cousin K's whole family, or whether inviting Cousin R means that his sister definitely won't come. Or whatever. I might or might not ever directly be effected by the ensuing grudges and griping, living several states away, but I would still rather not cause more than I have to!

Basically if I was planning a wedding I absolutely would ask my mom who she thinks I would be expected to invite at any given wedding size, early in the planning, and also how many of them would expect an invite but definitely not come (and tbh she would probably have to ask her sister for help) and I'd be glad for the offer.

[conuly]

If this young man doesn’t know who is in his family then I doubt those people will expect invites.

[viggorlijah]

That's cultural though - I'd be very surprised to get an invite from a relation in NZ, but I definitely got invites from relatives I barely knew of in Singapore when I was married to my ex. You have multiple ceremonies with different tiers of relations and friends and it's a pretty frequent and routine conversation for how many tables to plan for the dinner.

[beable]

I have cousins and great aunts and uncles that I literally only met because of family celebrations such as weddings and bnei mitzvot.

Now in the age of things like Facebook I get to stay more connected with some of them, but it’s not that weird to have cousins you’ve barely met on your wedding or bar/bat mitzvah list.

[mrissa]

Seriously that is SO cultural.

My grandmother is the keeper of the family tree in her gigantic family, a role that has been handed down to my mother and to me. I can't count how many times my mother has been busy with something and one of her closest cousins has said to me, "now, tell me again, sweetie--uncle x has four kids? five kids? oh, that's right, little y! Is y married? where do they all live then?" And that's their own cousin, only my cousin once removed (but it's my job).

For "we're throwing a barbecue" this is idle conversation, you invite the people you're close to. But for a wedding or a funeral, the people who are taking me aside to ask these questions would not hurt their cousins for the world. Even if they can't remember their names or how many of them there are.

Also there can be social minefields around asking part of a family and not another part. Most westerners understand this culturally as "it's okay to go for a walk with your friend and not ask their spouse but you don't invite your friend to your wedding and not ask their spouse." But depending on the subculture that sort of thing can feel equally rude to people with asking one cousin in a sibling group but not their younger sibling, or asking the cousins from one aunt but not another.

The old expression "a gentleman never offends accidentally" can really apply here: it's better to let him know what's out there and then let him decide how he wants to play it. If his answer is "I never liked Cousin Mopey and I'm not inviting them to my letting, let Auntie Tantrum have a shitfit if she wants," that's a valid answer--but it's a very different answer from "I didn't even think about Mopey, I didn't think Auntie would care one way or the other, I could easily have invited them if I'd given it a minute's thought."

[torachan]

I just do not understand people who would hold a grudge for 20 years about not getting an invite to some rando's wedding.

[cimorene]

It's impossible for me to imagine from their POV and I would not believe some of this shit if I hadn't seen the gossip in my mom's extended family.

[conuly]

I’d pay good money not to be invited to somebody’s wedding, graduation, or other life event.

[movingfinger]

There is a longrunning grudge in one corner of my family about who got herself buried next to whom.

[shirou]

Surely this is a question LW could just ask her son and the fiancée with whom she has a good relationship.

"I know you're looking at venues. It's hard to guess how many people you'll have without actually creating a tentative guest list. Would you like me to send you a list of family members so you can start thinking about whom to invite?"

Then organize the list into objectively named groups, e.g. cousins, instead of subjective tiers.

[azurelunatic]

With a phone call to discuss the political implications of various inclusions/exclusions. No paper trail.

[laurajv]

honestly, I thought this was the best advice to the LW: "Your son should be warned, if he does not already know, that you will not be the only one who has to listen to 20 years of hurt feelings if he distributes invitations capriciously."

Because Miss Manners is right: LW doesn't want to deal with the fallout of hurt feelings for 20 years, and probably has up until this point done a fair amount of standing between family drama and her son (even if only because the son is likely still on the young side). The son should be aware that if his invite list upsets his relatives, Mom isn't up for being the bulwark.

[full_metal_ox]

In a particularly grudge-retentive and contentious family, any children of the union might suffer the fallout of those hurt feelings.

[katiedid717]

Unless LW is paying for the wedding, she has no say over who does/doesn't get invited. It's her son and his future spouse's decision who does/doesn't get invited, and if that means their priority tiers for guests are different than hers, well...so be it. And if anyone gives her grief about it, she can just not engage.