Friends giving terrible excuses to skip my wedding
Friends offering weak excuses or RSVPing yes and failing to show up creates deep resentment that leads people to end those relationships entirely. Dealing with this betrayal after giving plenty of advance notice ruins the excitement of the wedding and makes couples want to cut ties with those guests for good.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Allowing the friendships to come to a natural end
- 2Accepting that an invitation is not a summons and they do not owe an explanation
- 3Calling each person directly to confirm attendance or get a final headcount
- 4Switching from a traditional party to a family day out at a theme park or amusement park
- 5Keeping events casual and immediate-family-focused with an open invite for anyone else
- 6Lowering expectations regarding how much extended family or friends will care about or prioritize the event
- 7Talking to the venue to upgrade guest experiences or add extra amenities to meet the minimum spend requirement
- 8Adding staging or lounge pieces to fill up the empty space in the venue
- 9Extending invites to people on a second-priority or B-list
- 10Using drapery walls to block off and shrink the room
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The RSVP date passed and we’ve been chasing the stragglers. Landing at 79 declined and 76 attending my wedding.”source ↗
“How pathetic and embarrassing, to have more declined.”source ↗
“It’s a wedding in a large ballroom with a 110min and above and beyond the wasted money, it will just look like an event too small/sparse for the space.”source ↗
“I just…can’t stop crying.”source ↗
“My kiddo is turning 3 in two weeks and nobody has even responded about coming to his birthday. Not his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.”source ↗
“I find people have become really bad about RSVPing lately.. for any type of event.”source ↗
“It can feel isolating but I also get it... Change the way the day goes.”source ↗
“I invited my son's entire class once and I didn't even get half of the responses back...”source ↗
“The worst are the people who RSVP yes and then don't show up or reach out. Those ones I can understand being friendship-ruining.”source ↗
“I get it, we all expect a certain number of declines but truly people’s bad excuses, when I sent STDs out 7+ months ago and I thought we were friends, is truly gross.”source ↗
“I feel like this is grounds for ending friendships for good. Do people actually not understand the implications of not attending a friends (local!) wedding?”source ↗
“I’m getting texts with bad (or no) excuses and then “but let’s hang out soon…” no? I never want to see these people again”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 8Guests dropping out after RSVPing yes for a wedding
- 8Bridesmaids ignoring texts and not getting their dresses
- 5What to do when a wedding guest's plus-one behaves offensively
- 2Why do I feel so embarrassed about having a small wedding guest list?
- 2What to do when your wedding planner goes silent
- 4Why don't friends care about my wedding as much as I cared about theirs?