American ‘so confused’ by how British people invite the ‘not so important people’ to their wedding
An American has been bamboozled by British wedding customs as far as having two different guest lists for the day goes.
If you've ever been to a wedding (and you probably have) then your invite will either tell you you're coming to the whole thing or that you've been invited to the evening do.
That's how weddings so often go in the UK, you have the ceremony followed by a meal and then more guests start arriving for the evening do where there's plenty of drinks and dancing.
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Not everyone invited to the do will be asked to attend the ceremony, and thus there will be some people who are there for the whole day and others just showing up for the evening party.
American TikToker Jeff Thurm was responding to a comment on this difference British weddings had to their US counterparts when he outlined his confusion.
A commenter had told Jeff that in the UK weddings had an evening reception 'where you invite the not so important people' who wouldn't be at the ceremony.
Jeff explained that this didn't really happen in America, so it was an experience he was struggling to wrap his head round.
He said: "This confused me so much, my friend who was having a wedding said if I wanted to bring a plus one for the evening part of the wedding I could.
"But it was just me invited for the day part. I found that so interesting, we don't have that in the US, if you are invited to the reception you're invited to the ceremony and vice versa.
"So I think it's really interesting that numbers are usually different for the before and the after."
Plenty hopped into the comments to explain some of the details to Jeff, telling him it was 'a budgeting thing' so the post-ceremony dinner wasn't serving twice the number of people.
Another said that the ceremony was for 'immediate family and friends' while the reception was for the extended circle of both, and that fresh reinforcements for the evening helped because 'most wedding guests during the day are wasted by then'.
Someone said they were 'not going' to a wedding 'if I'm only invited to an evening' while a second said she was getting married in a matter of days and would have 70 guests during the day with that number ballooning to 150 by the evening do.
Quite a few remarked that it was weird that Jeff's plus one had been invited to the evening do only when he'd been asked to come to the whole thing.
In general separating couples was seen as pretty strange but pretty much every Brit agreed that the numbers ballooned for the evening do of a wedding.
Joe Harker