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Monopoly Board Game Themed Invitation from Paper Truly
My sister has twins who are 18 years old. She now has a new live-in guy and they have a baby together. All are invited to our wedding. She is now demanding that her new guy's daughter be invited, too. New guy's daughter is 21 and we have never met her. She lives with her mom. We have worked so hard to keep our wedding small and intimate and quite frankly don't want a stranger there. Are we being selfish?
Ah yes, all of the people you MUST invite. Even if you've never met them, they aren't related to you, and you don't know if they'd even want to come. It seems like one of those differences between a regular party and a wedding: the obligatory invited guests. In this case, though, my opinion is that you'd be okay skipping the invite this time. You're under no obligation to invite someone with almost no connection to you, especially when your guest list has already been trimmed to keep it small and intimate. That excuse is a pretty solid one in this case. There just isn't room on the already ultra-trimmed guest list.
There are many reasons why someone might want their wedding to remain intimate and this young woman likely won't mind finding alternate plans that night. I'd suggest kindly and diplomatically telling them that the guest list is full, including five of them already allotted to your sister's family and everyone who lives in that home. If it causes any friction, fall back on the venue size, budget, or something equally impersonal.
If it all goes to hell? Toss her on the list since it may not be worth the fight (if she even RSVPs yes at all?).
Here is more advice for plus-ones and extra guests you've never met, including some steal-it wording…
About the Author: Catherine Clark
Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com.
I’m going to go out a limb here and guess that the 21-year-old wouldn’t want to go to a wedding where she knows no one and is only there because she feels obligated.
Demanding? What are the consequences if she’s not invited? Is there a plan for the daughter to ever be introduced?
“I don’t know her, my partner does not know her…at least one of us must know the person invited”
My husband and I were very adamant that there be no strangers to either of us at our wedding. I felt bad because his mom asked if we could invite my husband’s uncle and we said no, in the (at that time) 13 years we had been dating I had never met this Uncle and they never attempted to reach out to us. He was kinda not part of things. Plus it would have opened the floodgates to my mother trying to invite people that weren’t a part of our lives. It’s one of the few times I truly stood my ground. All ended up being fine, thank goodness!
I suspect the issue is that if sis feels like the adult daughter is someone she’s ‘adopted’ as a child due to her relationship with the kid’s dad, then the invitations are excluding one of her children, but not the others. Depending on family dynamics with the sister and her dude, the sister could feel like that’s going to cause more issues for them, and that’s motivating the demand for an invite.
If possible, the thing to do may be to talk to sister and see what’s going on.