Tacky
Invitations
Jan-Jun 2000
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It's short but sour. A couple I know became engaged rather quickly and
had a city hall wedding. Six months later they decided that they DID want
to have a wedding after all. ( there was no obvious reason for their
initial haste) So why get married again? They printed the stores
where they were registered on the wedding invitation. I've never
seen anything so tacky in my life.
Invitations0318-03
Several years ago, my husband and I received a nice hand-written
invitation to my former boss's wedding reception. She had been divorced,
had grown kids, and had been living with her boyfriend for many years. We
were thrilled to make the 4.5-hour drive to Iowa for their party. The
invitation said "Saturday," so we arrived at Saturday, right on
time, and there were several cars parked at their farm. We figured more
would be arriving, as there wasn't a "arrival" time as there
would be for a wedding. We walked to their front door and, being sort of
immature that moment, I rang their doorbell several times in succession.
Someone came to the door right away, and shushed me, ushered us into the
house saying quietly, "they're in the middle of their vows!" We
were horrified, I was embarrassed as hell. We stood in the back of the
dining room while C. and T. recited their vows in front of their
fireplace. The only other people there were their immediate families
(siblings, children and spouses, grandchildren, an elderly parent or two)
and the officiant. A few minutes later, when the ceremony ended, they came
over to talk to us, were incredibly gracious to us and laughed it off. The
groom told me with sincerity, "This was great, now I have a funny,
memorable story to tell people about our wedding!" They couldn't have
been more gracious and wonderful about my faux pas. It turns out, the
reception was the following day! Then they invited us to go to dinner, as
the entire family was going to a very nice French restaurant about 30
minutes away in the city. They tried to insist, but we knew it should be a
family-only event, and we apologized for the mistake, for being obnoxious
with the doorbell, for interrupting their vows, everything. The whole
family could not have been nicer to us (I knew her son, daughter and
grandson beforehand, so that helped). They were the epitome of class. We
left our gift and card behind and drove back that day to Minnesota. When I
got home, I dug the hand-written invitation out of the garbage, and there
it was: Saturday. My boss had written down the wrong day and date. I felt
a little better, and wanted to send it to her to show her that I really
did come on the "right" day, but she was so wonderful after my
awful interruption of her wedding vows, I didn't dare do that. Lesson
learned: ring the doorbell once like an adult. invitations0411-03
This is less of a hellworthy story than a small reminder to
brides--please put the correct mailing address on your announcements! Just
a dab of backstory--the persons in this case were my cousin
"Chris," who is younger by about two years, and his now-wife.
She is Mormon, and it is common in Mormon weddings to hold the actual
service privately in a Temple and then invite all the family to the
reception, which receives the greatest part of the wedding budget. So I
received an invitation to the reception, which was a thousand miles away.
The truly odd thing about it all, despite the incorrect address, is that
the handwriting was my grandmother's. My Aunt "Tina," my
father's sister, has never been especially close or warm to my sister or
I, so my mother and I surmised that she had simply given my grandmother
(her mother) a few invitations and told them to send them out to those she
chose. But anyway, at least my cousin's behavior was quite correct. One I
collected the correct address from Mom and resent the card, he promptly
sent a Thank-you note. I'm not really upset about it all, but I am a
little confused that Chris and his bride couldn't send out the
announcements themselves. Do you think if they had, the address would have
been correct?
Invitations0412-03
I recently received this mass email that was sent to about 20
unimportant guests to a wedding. Apparently we were supposed to decide
among ourselves who should attend. This was sent about 2 months before the
big day.
"As most of you know, Kelly and I are getting married on June 22nd
here in San Antonio*. We’re in the process of trying to get our
invitations in the mail, and we’ve run into a small hitch. We’re
limited (by fire codes and other safety type stuff) to one hundred people
that can attend, and the list of folks that we would like to have with us
on that day is probably double that right now. We’re going through the
especially painful process of deciding who we can invite and who we must
regrettably leave out. The upshot is that we’re lucky enough to have so
many people that we feel are indispensable and so important to both of us.
If any of you know in advance that you won’t be able to attend, I would
appreciate it if you could drop me a note and let me know so that we can
place you on the wedding announcement list instead of the wedding
invitation list. Thanks Chris "
By the way, this email was sent to both the grooms' ex-girlfriend and
his sister.
invitations0425-03
Two years ago a co-worker's daughter was getting married and a printed
invitation was posted on the bulletin board for all other co-workers to
see and hopefully attend. Now for some background on the family. In the
organization that I work, with various offices around the city, there are
15 to 20 of the family members all working for this same organization.
Mind you now, very few of us knew the bride or the bridegroom. We knew the
mother and father, 2 aunts, 5 or 6 of the cousins, and a couple of the
uncles. They are a large and well known family (not affluent -- just well
known). They are good people just a little misguided. When the invitation
was posted I made a comment to one of my fellow co-workers about not
attending weddings if I were not given a personal invitation. This comment
was overheard by one of the aunts. It was close to the wedding day, when
the aunt that overheard the conversation brought 2 invitations and handed
one to me and one to the other co-worker that I made the comment to. You
will not believe that she felt that if we didn't get a personal invitation
we would not get her niece a GIFT. But that is not the clincher - - they
were copied on the copy machine. We had a good laugh, needless to say we
didn't get a gift nor did we attend the wedding.
Invitations0517-03
My cousin had a "shot gun" wedding. As a slight background on
my cousin "Sam" and his future wife "Diane". Sam met
Diane through the internet. She was a housewife with a kid and wanted to
leave her husband for Sam (Sam didn’t know about the husband part until
a little bit later). She moved out here from out-of-state with her child
and moved in with Sam. Fast forward a year and a half later when Sam
hinted around that things weren’t working out with him and Diane and
that it would have to end soon. I believe exactly 30 days after that,
Diane was 1 month pregnant. Congratulations? Sam’s first impulse was to
immediately get married for the sake of the baby but his father convinced
him to wait. It was a good thing because plenty of things happened between
the announcement of Diane and Sam’s expectancy and the wedding day. Here’s
is a quick summary: before she was pregnant she was against our family’s
religion and then miraculously converted (she was grasping at straws to be
accepted); she had another child back in home state; she was still married
to her first husband up to 30 days before the wedding; and if all of that
wasn’t enough to blow you away perhaps the following will knock you off
of your chair, there was a big question to whether or not Sam was the
father of the baby. Turns out he was. Nevertheless, you can imagine the
uproar in laughter when each family member received a very romantic pink
card with a castle in the background and a Cinderella looking coach in the
front with the caption saying something like "Our love is like a
fairy tale come true…"
Invitations0521-03
My fiancé and I are not having a small wedding. We had decided that
each side could invite 100 people. This was not done to be a control
freak, but because the room at the reception only held so many people. My
mother-in-law to be, however, did not seem to understand this at all. She
called us literally every other day asking for more invitations. We did
allow her to go over her guest list and invite an additional twenty people
who she absolutely had to have there, but even this did not satisfy her.
She continued to call telling us how she had "social
obligations" to fulfill and wanted to invite more people to get us
more money in gifts! By the way, many of these "close family
members" that she just had to invite were people like her husband's
sister's husband's father and his girlfriend, and her cousin's husband's
sisters and brother! Finally we were tired of the whole situation and told
her we were out of wedding invitations, just so she would stop calling and
leave us alone. This did not work at all. Less than a week later she
called again to tell me that because we had no more invitations left to
invite her additional guests, she had gone to Kinko's and had our response
card photocopied and was calling family members to ask for the invitation
back so she could send it on to others!!
Invitations0516-03
Its June 3rd and my second cousin is getting married July 5th. Everyone
in the family got an invitation except for me. That's not to say that I'm
not invited, its just that they don't seem to think I deserve an
invitation. They sent an invite to my mother with the implication that if
she's invited, then so am I. I live three hundred miles away from mom and
am financially independent from her. I spend about ten or twelve days a
year in my mother's house. This isn't the first time that I haven't been
formally invited to events while everyone else in the family gets an
invite. I find it extremely rude and hurtful and make it as clear as
possible that I don't attend events I'm not invited to. Considering also
that the bride is younger than me and adding into that that I have to fly
to the wedding, and am expected to bring a gift (since not doing so will
entitle certain family members to whisper behind my back about how
immature I am) and the other costs of going out of town including, but not
limited to, taking vacation days that I rather use another time. I needed
to vent and seeing this website I thought it would be a good place!
Perhaps my rude relations will see it eventually and think "hmm....
maybe putting a stamp on one extra envelope isn't that difficult"
invitations0604-03
I received an invitation. It was professionally printed, not
photocopied. It did not ask for money or even include any evidence that
gifts would be appreciated. It was tasteful all around. So why do I think
it belongs on your site? Because the groom was a man with whom I had been
corresponding for over three years. Until two weeks before the wedding, I
was under the impression that he was planning to leave the Navy when his
current tour of duty was up (about a week before the wedding was
scheduled) and move to my state. We had often talked about how much nicer
it would be to date rather than talk on the phone, and he had actually
asked me whether or not he should take a job in a city about three-hours
drive from where I lived; he didn't want to be that far from me, but it
was a firm offer, and they would pay for the move. Looking back, I can
admit our relationship was probably doomed. We were of different faiths
(I'm Jewish, but not observant. and he returned to the LDS church to marry
his bride). My family was wealthier and better educated than his, which
didn't bother me but sometimes seemed to bother him. But at 24, all I
cared about was my heartbreak. invitations0616-03
I am to be married in about a month and so far, things have gone pretty
smoothly. Except for two incidents involving my fiancé's mother and his
aunt. We have very tight space restrictions for the reception- the room
that *I* want for *my* wedding will only hold 100 guests. That being fine
with us, we booked it and made our guest list with help from the parents-
from booking the room to the wedding was only six months, so we sent
"save the date" cards immediately.
When all was (I thought) said and done, we had 106 people on the list
several of whom we knew could not attend so we were sitting pretty.
Invitations were sent out 9 weeks before the wedding and I thought that
was the end of it. But for the next two weeks, my future MIL kept sending
me more names and addresses of people I *had* to invite. Worried that
these people would actually show, I was freaking out. I didn't know these
people, they hadn't even seen the family in years (one guy was the
mechanic from their hometown- and he's coming!!!). I was very upset and
feeling very disrespected because no one seemed to care that we didn't
have the room for these people and that I was uncomfortable adding so many
people- she added 25 extra people that my parents would have to pay for! I
explained my concerns to my fiancé, but not once did he ever confront his
mother about her behavior- every time she added a new name he said,
"That's fine, we'll invite them." I couldn't get him to disagree
with her so I had to invite these people. I'm still hoping most of them
won't show or else I'll have to change the room that I wanted to badly for
my reception... Because of the aforementioned space issues, we didn't
invite dates of single guests. Everyone understood this and was fine with
it. My fiancé's aunt is a single, very unattached woman, but when I
received her response card back it had a very lovely "2" written
on it. Two??? On the inside she had written, "I'm inviting 'Harry,'
is that okay?" First of all, there was only one name on the
invitation and I understood it to be extremely poor etiquette to invite
guests on your own. Second, she could have called first and asked before
assuming it was okay (which it is not). Third, no one has seen or spoken
to said aunt in months- she hasn't even visited her own mother who lives
just a mile away- and she had been incredibly selfish the last time we
spoke with her. And lastly, this "Harry" is a friend of the
family anyway- my future in-laws had seen him recently and he knew he
wasn't invited because of size of the room. He is a friend of the family,
not of this aunt though, and we would have invited him had we had the
space. I almost just wrote "No." beneath her question on the
response card and sent it back! Invitations0514-03
We recently received a unique invitation to a wedding. It was handmade
and started with "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So announce the marriage of
their daughter ..." I thought, good heavens, they have run off and
gotten married. But no, I must be out of touch. I had to go to the very
bottom of the invitation to find out that it was indeed an invitation to
an upcoming wedding and not an announcement of a marriage that had taken
place. I always thought announcements were sent after the event happened.
After all, who would send an announcement of a baby's birth before it was
born? Things just got better from there. They did not enclose a reply
card, preferring that you call or email your RSVP. I guess they were
trying to save money (hence the handmade invitation). The topper of this
entire invitation came at the bottom, they included all the places where
they were registered! No big surprise given how greedy the groom is, now I
know the bride was made for him. Needless to say, I approached attending
this wedding with caution. Given that it was an afternoon wedding and the
invitation was very informal, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be
a formal wedding, complete with groom in tails (and bowtie instead of an
ascot). It's hard to believe these two actually hired a wedding
coordinator. Given all the mistakes in the wedding and the tackiness of
the invitation, the money would have been better spent sending out proper
invitations. Invitations0626-03
One week after my fiancé and I announced our engagement for February
of next year, my notoriously cheap cousin and his girlfriend of 13 years
announced their engagement - and marriage the NEXT MONTH! He said that the
invitations would be word-of-mouth only. Less than two weeks before the
wedding he calls me and asks me if I'm going to be at the wedding. I said
of course, put me down for two. He says, 'Well, M. and I were hoping to
keep it just family.' I told him that (a) my fiancé IS my family and (b)
we've always included his fiancée in things in our family even though she
wasn't technically related at that point. Do you know what my cousin said?
'How was I to know you were going to go and get engaged to some guy I've
never met?'
Well, first of all, we live out of town and my fiancé and I have made
numerous trips up there but my cousin was never around; all our other
relatives have met my fiancé. Also, he is not 'some guy,' he is my
fiancé. And third, WE announced our engagement before he did! So what if
we weren't together 13 years? I was extremely hurt by the intimation that
I was bringing some stranger to HIS wedding. THEN I find out from my dad
that supposedly my cousin told him (just then) that the wedding had a '13'
theme - it was on the 13th and that each side would be allowed 13 guests.
Nice of him to let us in on that NOW! Anyway - in the end I brought my
fiancé. My uncle and aunt were unable to make the trip due to health
problems, so there was 'room.' And lest you think this was some big fancy
affair, it was salad and pasta - which was nice, but nothing like his
equally wealthy sister's wedding. So it wasn't like he was spending $75 a
person and as such needed a precise count. As I suspected, my fiancé
blended in just fine with the guests just like he was related. And guess
what? There were more like 50 guests than 26. Seems a bunch of my cousin's
friends showed up - the place looked kind of empty, so the wedding was
delayed to allow for more people to fill out the room. Looked better in
the pictures, I guess. I'm certain he turned a profit.
Invitations0722-03
When I was growing up, we were not very close to my father's extended
family; his sister and her family did stay in touch with them. 20 years
ago, one of his first cousins was getting married. I think we heard about
the wedding from my aunt, who was invited, but I don't think we expected
an invitation. Well, we got one - the week after the wedding. At first I
thought it got lost in the mail, then I realized it must have been mailed
very late - maybe the "B" list. But then I looked at the
postmark - it was mailed a day or two AFTER the wedding!! I know my
parents' feelings were hurt; I thought this was an incredibly tacky action
from a family that prides itself on its pedigree. If we were
unintentionally left off, they could have called us and explained; if we
weren't going to be invited, but then dad's aunt found out we knew about
the wedding - so what? We realized we weren't as close to them as my dad's
sister and would never have given it a second thought. I never said
anything to my father's aunt or cousin, but I have never felt welcome
whenever we're with that side of the family.
Invitations0728-03
II have a story
of possibly the tackiest wedding invitation ever. It was my uncle's
at-home wedding several years ago to a woman who had become infamous
rather quickly for rudeness. However, my relatives were very happy for my
uncle's good news and everyone in the family chipped in and paid
for/worked part of the reception. For example, one of his brothers bought
the food and cooked it, a sister cleaned his house, his mother bought the
flowers, etc. It was planned out to be quite a lovely wedding that would
be quite easy on the new couple since all was handled for them as their
wedding gift.
Well, then we received the invitations. They were normal peach and white
embossed cards rather formally inviting everyone to the wedding at my
uncle's house. At the bottom was a very informal note that the reception
would be in the same place using an old TV show quote. Very cute, we all
thought. Then we read further down.
There was a request that no one bring presents, only money, to "help
pay for this shindig"!
Pay for what? Everything had already been paid for by his relatives!
Obviously a way to shake down his guests for cash. invitations0729-03
Jeanne- I wish I had the preceding, original wedding
announcement to the one I'm sending. It contained the classic, "we
really don't expect gifts, but if you must, here is where we're
registered." Gag, and not to mention, printed on plain white copy
paper and hung up on the bulletin board at work. Anyway, the one I've
attached has a few gems in it. I particularly like the part where they say
that "you are all very dear to us", yet this thing hangs on the
bulletin board at work, read by countless passersby, from a woman no
longer working there and a man few had ever met. (She apparently had
retained a key friend who still does work with me and hung this up for
anyone who might remember this woman.) "Since, of course, we love the
Lord - living together was not an option." Of course! I really don't
know why this sends me into fits of laughter, it just does. And the
kicker? "Special Instructions: Bring a dish of some kind (with food
in it of course) and we will provide everything else!" Really now,
WHAT ELSE IS THERE? The keg? Boy, that'll set you back about $80. And to
insult their apparent multitude of invited guests intelligence, they had
to HIGHLIGHT the fact that there was to be FOOD in that dish that YOU, THE
GUEST, ARE SUPPLYING!!!!! invitations0728-03
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