The Plunge Blog

A reader writes:

"My fiancee's mother is very involved with our planning, which at times is not a problem at all.  However, we are almost 50 people over what we had wanted to invite for our wedding. 

"Her mom keeps insisting that we invite her cousins' son (who my bride-to-be has never met), and refuses to back down.  I want to tell her that its OUR wedding and we don't want to invite them, but she is helping us pay for it and keeps throwing that in our face.  How do we handle this?"

It's Saturday night. Close your eyes and imagine a guys night out-pitchers, shooting pool, grilled steaks, baseball game, whatever the hell it is you do.

Think about who you'd invite for this. Your buddies. Your real friends. Do you include your boss? Or your other random co-workers?

NO.

Because they're not your friends, they're dudes that you're forced to spend time with out of circumstance and decorum. Your free-time is your free-time. So apply the same rules to your wedding. Don't over-think this. And don't bow to intra-office politics. Unless you have a genuinely best-buds relationship with your co-workers, scrub them from your guest list.

Any questions?

[You] Too late. I accidentally invited a few of them.

Have you sent them invitations?

Well...no, not exactly. But over coffee, I casually mentioned that of course they're invited. So now I'm obligated to formally invite them, right?

Wrong. You're off the hook. Just throw your fiancée under the bus.

Excuse me?

As we mentioned in our overall advice on guest lists (click here), the best approach with co-workers is to lie, lie, lie. Tell them that because it's a small wedding, your fiancée and her family have a strict "no co-worker" policy. You'd love to invite them...but your hands are tied.

Hmm. What about my boss?

Same rule applies to him or her. Besides, on this day of all days, do you really want to deal with your frickin' boss?

Yeah, but...when they got married, my other co-workers invited the boss to the wedding. I need to keep pace.

Dude. Have a backbone. Embrace some basic psychology: people want you when they feel unwanted. Think back to when you were dating, how the "unattainable girl" was hotter than the one who dropped her skirt. Same goes for the workplace. By not inviting your boss, however subconsciously, you just earned a little more cache.

I want to invite a few buddies from Marketing, but I don't want to invite the dorks from Internal Audit.

Bad idea. Better to go all or nothing. When you invite some of your work friends, you open the door for tension and bruised feelings. People get jealous.

For more Q&A, see the entire article Co-Workers: In or Out?

A reader writes:

"If this were the radio, I'd be the "long time, first time" guy calling in... Thanks for your help with questions from others so far.

"Okay, my fiancee has this ex-boyfriend whom she dated for 5+ years. She grew pretty close to his Mother and while I don't have any hard feelings towards her, he's a different story. My fiancee had to file a restraining order against this guy for stalking a while back so anything that has to do with him just makes me go crazy.

A reader comments:

"So, I'm the girl with the guys' perspective here...

"My fiancé, Joel, wants the huge wedding, I want the justice of the peace... I've been fighting him like crazy about the guest list.

"I have 70 people I'm inviting for "my side"... He has over 300 he wants to invite. I am sooo showing him this article... maybe it will help convince him that he does NOT need to invite coworkers from the LAST place he worked."

Aaaaand the chipper wedding news continues!

Yesterday, we saw a groom get married, get plastered, then have the terrific idea of joy-riding on his motorcycle with his new bride, and then crash his bike and get arrested.

Today...something far more sober and serious. If you're looking for jokes, look elsewhere.

Over in Kuwait, details have emerged suggesting that a scorned ex-girlfriend attended a wedding...and then, in jealous rage, set a fire that killed over 40 people.

Tragic. Awful. And, well, let's face it, another damn good reason to think twice about inviting your ex-girlfriend. (A full list of Pros and Cons--and under what scenarios it's acceptable--here.)

From the LA Times:

At least 43 women and children died Saturday night when a fire broke out in a women's wedding tent, and now several local newspapers are reporting that the 23-year-old ex-wife of the groom may have started the fire in an act of revenge against her former husband and his new bride.

The headline of the Kuwait Times today read, "'Scorned' Woman Unleashed Fury." The accompanying article said authorities had arrested the suspect after her maids claimed to have seen her setting fire to the tent with kerosene.

So, when you're stressed with some petty issue involving your bride or your family or your guestlist... keep this in perspective and remember that most of your guests, probably, will live.

Always a thorny issue. Should you invite The Ex? 

The results of The Plunge poll are in, and the grooms have spoken emphatically: NO.

62% of Plunge readers said that they will not invite The Ex. 23% said "Yeah, ancient history" and the rest said that "I'm marrying the first girl that would talk to me."

This is a little higher than we might have guessed, mainly because, for better or worse, these days there are so many ex-girlfriends-that-then-become-friends.  It seems, though, that grooms are taking the safe and prudent course.

But are there times when you should invite The Ex? Absolutely.

It depends on the friendship scenario. From our article in the Complications section:

Ex-Scenario 1: You never see The Ex, you're not friends with her, you haven't seen her in years.

Easy. Snub her. If you're not currently good friends, there's utterly no reason to invite The Ex, and your fiancée, justifiably, will wonder why you're even bringing it up.

Never create drama when it can be avoided. Think about the upside vs. the downside. What's the upside-you get to rub The Ex's face in the fact that you're marrying someone hotter? Frankly...that sounds pretty good. Nothing wrong with that. But the downside is that your fiancée will get the wrong impression and wonder why you want this woman to join you for the most important day of your life, whether you still harbor feelings, if she should be jealous, if you'd ever cheat, etc. It gets ugly fast.

Ex-Scenario 2: You banged the chick within 12 months of starting to date your fiancée.

Just like jokes about Hurricane Katrina, "TOO SOON." These things need time. Barring extraordinary circumstances, recent girlfriends must be excluded.

Ex-Scenario 3: You and The Ex are now just platonic good buddies.

This is getting more and more common. You may invite her only if and only if all the following conditions are met:

3A: You've socialized with The Ex as a couple and you haven't noticed any tension between The Ex and the fiancée.

3B: You haven't hooked up with her in years (as in the above, at least 12 months before meeting your fiancée.)

3C: You were never engaged to The Ex.

For Ex-Scenarios 4, 5, and 6, see the complete article here.

Sigh. It's wedding season, and that means we see a lot of dumb quirky stories about wacky wedding practices. Most we ignore. Some we mock. But every once in a while, a weird custom illuminates how the "wedding industry," for better or worse, has some curious biases.

Take this story. Reuters reports that in Japan, guests can solve the problem of a too-small guest list by hiring "fake guests" to fill out the room.

From Reuters via MSNBC:

For 20,000 yen ($200), Office Agents provides a staff member to attend the ceremony. For an additional 5,000 yen, that person can perform a song or a dance. Pitch in another 10,000 yen and that person can make a speech that would make you proud.

It's true in this recession. It's true in boom times. It's been true for decades.

At the heart of wedding planning is a sweet, romantic old saying: "Money talks, bullshit walks." Those who are paying--whether it's her parents, your parents, or even you and your fiancée--will inevitably feel a sense of entitlement, and those who aren't paying could feel insecure, overlooked, or marginalized. Welcome to your new life. This is the awfulness you've dreaded--power struggles, jealousies, and holy wars over guest lists.

Stock up on your favorite hard liquor. Drink deep. When you sober up, you'll probably need to tackle one (or more) of these five uncomfortable money issues.

Do you have a weird, awkward money issue that's not included? E-mail Drowning@ThePlunge.com.

Today marks the three-day anniversary of The Plunge's public existence. [Sniff.] Has it been so long? The time has really flown by.

The feedback has been mostly positive, but we do get the following question quite a bit. (By quite a bit we mean twice.)  "Are you guys just full of satire and mocking? Are you 100% a joke-site?"

Absolutely not. Only 95%. We live by the motto "A spoonful of sarcasm helps the wedding planning go down," so we lace the site with irreverence, but yes, we'll admit it, there are plenty of actual, useful, constructive tools in here.

Which brings us to our newest feature.

Usually, the worst-case scenario for inviting your ex-girlfriend is jealousy, tension, and maybe, if you're truly unlucky, a random outburst of tears.

Unless you're this guy. As the NY Post reports, groom Harold Purdum invited his ex-girlfriend (and boss), to the wedding.

The ex got drunk. Then the ex got loud. Allegedly, the sloshed-ex created an outburst and said, "Me and Harry were good together. You had to ruin everything by marrying him. You f- - -ed everything up." Then, in front of the entire crowd, the ex said she was sleeping with the groom.

More bloody details:

As newspapers continue to hook every possible story to the economy, The Boston Globe highlights another wedding issue that's impacted by the recession: the guest list. And, specifically, Save the Date cards.

What they don't mention is that this could be good news for you.

From Boston.com: