Wedding Ettiquette, Was This Rude?

I don’t think it was rude so much as simply thoughtless. They are putting together a wedding, there are so many reasons your name might not have been on it. For one example, if a drop of liquid fell on your name on the list it might have smeared the ink.
That’s just one possibility.

Consider the possibility that it is all a mistake.
In your circumstances that sounds much more likely than a purposely made decision.

I think you are whiny and looking for reasons to be pissed off. This isn’t worth even one ounce of thought.

What they did was odd and inconsiderate, but not worth mentioning, since mentioning would do nothing but either mortify the bride or set her off.

If it’s really that big of a deal to you, then don’t go to the wedding. And if you get a “how come you aren’t coming?” reaction. you can say, “my husband couldn’t find a date for his +1”.

Otherwise, suck it up and never mention it to the bride.

Weddings are weird. Makes you realize some people are super old school about stuff.

Have received my share of wedding invitations where it was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. [Guy’s Name], even though I was actually closer to them. The first time I was like what the heck? Afterwards, I just shrugged it off.

Now as a parent, I find myself guilty of doing something similar. When I’m making an invite list for my kids, I automatically list the moms first—even when I know the dads more.

There’s a lot of gender bias that we don’t think about.

I wasn’t planning on mentioning this to anyone. Simply getting a conversation with you guys about the rudeness of it and nothing further.

It’s usually the woman who puts everything together. It’s the women who send out invitations and such. There is a very good chance that the guy your husband works with never even mentioned you to his fiance.

@BackinBlack It is odd. I’m not sure I’d say rude unless I knew how it had happened.

Wait. I take it back. The bride to be is your friend and she addressed the envelope that way? I find that very odd. Chalk it up to stress, I guess.

People often end up with their mothers and/or friends and/or books and web sites with traditional formal ideas about wedding invitations helping them with details, as the couple themselves are often a bit overwhelmed by a mountain details on top of an already momentous personal event.

And, times have changed, but weddings are a ceremony where many people still like the traditional forms, for various reasons. And in the not-too-distant past (e.g. 50 or so years ago), the mainstream traditional way of many/most people was to refer to married women as Mrs. [husband’s name]. And even a mistake not to do so.

I know people who were annoyed with each other for years over the wording of various things on wedding invitations!

It seems to me it’s very much not worth it to get annoyed about… but that the annoyance points to something else in the annoyed person’s feelings and ideas and personal history that could be worth examining, to heal whatever old wound that is, if such skills are available to that person (in this case, the asker of this question).

So my suggestion would be to forget about this present wedding invitation, and to feel what the upset about it feels like, and ask yourself (ask the feelings in your body, not your thinking) “what is this upset really about?” And sit with and reflect on that.

And then, also ask yourself where this feeling comes from. Try to remember when you have felt this way in the past. When was the first time you ever felt this way? And then ask what that time was all about for you?

Ask yourself how genuinely relevant those feelings are to the situation where someone used the traditional formal format for the wedding invitation from your long-time friend. Are you really upset about that wording, or did it just open up this unhealed lifetime pattern of upset?

Then sit with all the painful feelings you’ve had from this whole pattern. Mourn for the actual upset of the original event. Mourn for all the inauthentic upset it has caused since then. Recognize it as a trigger you have, and a way of thinking that may sometimes lead to upset when it gets triggered in situations where it may not really be what you want to respond that way.

My former S-I-L paid a service to send out her invites. The bride is under so much stress that I bet she just scanned the list & just missed that you weren’t included. After so many +1’s she was probably numb by the time she got to your invite. I’m sure that it wasn’t intentional & I’m just as sure that they didn’t do it to offend you. I don’t think it was done to be intentionally rude…just one of those screwy things that can go wrong when you’re stressed. During my brother’s first wedding, the bride’s mother was so freakin pushy that she was giving our mother anxiety attacks so Mom’s doctor gave her something to help calm her down. Well, the day of the wedding Mom was so stressed that she was going to do something wrong that she took 2 pills to calm her down. It was near Christmas & she went to place a present under the tree, she began to lose her balance & she along with the Christmas tree went down. Until the day Mom passed,we teased her about trying to climb the Christmas tree!!! Well the ding-a-ling my brother married ran away years later & is no longer in our lives. Her Mom passed away even before our Mom did. Still, the family gets a chuckle thinking back to the day Mom tried to climb the tree. The former M-I-L wasn’t trying to be rude to our Mom…she just wanted everything to be perfect for her daughter’s wedding & thngs just go haywire & she could only do so much!!!!

It would have been better etiquette if your name was on it, but do not dwell on this.

Weddings are very difficult and stressful, and maybe she didn’t address them, maybe she doesn’t know how to spell your name correctly and was embarrassed, maybe since you two aren’t married she just didn’t know the right thing to do. She might have overthought it and worried about, and your job, the proper etiquette for you, is to not be offended, be gracious, and be happy for them.

Etiquette rules are there to help everyone feel comfortable. When someone screws up some rule, it’s up to the others to show their social education and be understanding and forgiving.

These sort of “shoulds” that people get angry about can break up friendships and families and it’s ridiculous when it does. She should have invited me this way, she should have introduced herself to me, she should have sat at the other end of the table, she should have let Aunt Maggy sing at the wedding, etc.

You don’t seem to be saying you are going to be angry and hurt forever, but I’m just saying in general let these things go. You will screw up an invite one day, and you will hope you didn’t hurt the person badly, because that was not your intention. Trust me, we all make mistakes, or don’t understand some social rules at times. Especially, if you spend time with people from different cultures, then you really have to be understanding of things like this and not get offended.

@Zaku I have sat down to reflect upon my upset and have concluded that it stems from an unhealed lifetime pattern of living in a society that still upholds patriarchal norms.

LOL

I might agree that it’s rude, but it’s such a petty thing, that it’s not worth the bother of feeling offended. If you think about it, it’s obviously not a deliberate slight to hurt your feelings. It’s just one of those inevitable glitches that pops up whenever we attempt the rigors of formality. I’ve never seen a fancy wedding without missteps and crises.

I don’t think of it as rude. I think of it as an oversight on the part of whomever did the invites.

@JLeslie: She is married.

Oh, married. Does she have a different last name?

@JLeslie I know this post is super old but yes I do have a different last name. Both bride and groom know this as we are very close friends.

I guess the groom pissed my husband off in a different way (LOL) and my husband made a comment about how they didn’t even put my name on their invite (oh boy) and he was shocked to hear this and said his mom did the invites. He apologized to me even though I said it wasn’t necessary to apologize I figured it wasn’t intentional.

What I did realize about this is that I am not made about the invite I am sensitive because this is how it always goes… I am forgotten and everyone just assumes when they say my husband that I am merged or morphed into him or I am just an extension of him. In our circle of family and friends, this is how it always is. I have some how lost my identity and this wedding invite threw me over the edge. Especially since I would be the one RSVPing for us, buying the gift the card and signing it, getting us to the wedding, getting my husband’s suit picked out and ready, on top of me always doing the behind the scenes things for other people and somehow my husband gets all the credit.

I know @BackinBlack. We have a barbque. I’m the one who spends 2 days making sides, baked beans, deviled eggs, etc. etc. etc. But who gets all the credit for a great barbque? Rick. Because he put the meat on the grill and took it off the grill and everyone is there to see it.

That’s almost always the way it works. But in our case, because I exhibited absolutely no interest in getting a new grill, the wife took the initiative, did the research and bought this fantastic grill from Lowe’s. She does all the grilling. It’s irrevocably “her baby”. She on occasion allows me to clean it, or install or remove the cover, and it’s my responsibility to make sure the extra propane tank is always full. No way in hell, I’ll ever get credit for my wife’s cooking.

@BackinBlack Thanks for coming back to the Q. Just curious, if they had addressed the invitation for Mr. and Mrs. HusbandFirstName HusbandLastName would it have felt just as bad?

I think a lot of women feel like you, like they sort of disappear when married. It sometimes is very insidious how it happens. Kind of creeps up on you that eventually everything is what your husband wanted, or everyone thinks of you as part of a couple rather than an individual, and the couple is basically whatever they know about your husband. This happened to me when I was living in TN. Not so much in other places I have lived. Maybe because I was not working for a while in TN? Not sure.

I’m glad the air was cleared about the invitation, and that they apologized to you. It does sound like it was a simple mistake.

Was the wedding fun at least?

@JLeslie I would have definitely felt better if it at least said Mr. and Mrs. It ‘s like only he was invited and allowed to bring a guest, me. When I’ve been a friend and source of support to the couple and mostly the bride for years. Even though it was unintentional, it just felt like I wasn’t invited.

It’s interesting to me that you said the same happened to you but only in a certain city. When we moved to a new city 5 years ago I started noticing these changes and I was being treated differently. I never felt this way where we lived before.

The wedding is next week! I bought a really cool dress and new heels so if it isn’t fun.. I’ll at least look good. :)

Looking good at the event can be a great remedy for something like this.

About where I lived, it was weird. In Tennessee, for some reason people didn’t take the career I used to have seriously, and seemed to assume I didn’t have much of a brain in my head.

Where I live now most people assume you don’t work presently, most people are retired, and so they are in the age group that a lot of people associate with women not having had careers, but yet, just the opposite is assumed here about careers. Most women I meet did work, had very interesting lives, and even if they never worked they aren’t assumed to be just the “wife of so and so. I see no difference between expectations for women and men to lecture or participate in discussions (I attend a lot of lectures on various topics from science to current events, basically everything and everything). Many couples are separate part of the day pursuing their own Interests and activities.