...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

[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!