Reply To: “Can you field one more ‘plus 1’ question?”

As someone who is currently planning a wedding, I can say that navigating the invites is a minefield. There’s pretty much no way to have a wedding that sticks to a budget and not offend SOMEONE. And you find yourself making a lot of rules that you might not want to if money/space were no object. Rules like, “Married folks get a +1, unmarrieds don’t,” which is actually quite a common one.

I do know that getting upset and destroying long-term relationships solely over a wedding invite is not worth it. Since you are very close to the bride’s mom, you could always aks her why your BF was not included, rather than speculating about the reasons (and leaping to the most hurtful conclusions rather than giving a friend of FORTY ONE years the benefit of the doubt).

But at the end of the day, this is the couple’s big day. It’s not about you and your feelings. You may be overestimating how important it is to the bride to have you there — you are her MOM’s BFF, not hers, and she already may have cut someone else off the list to accommodate having you, but drew the line at inviting a guy you’ve only been dating a couple of years, particularly if she, the bride, doesn’t know him well.

If you love these people, give them some grace. It’s one day out of the rest of your lives.