Author Topic: Sister invited to accompany sister - Carolyn Hax Oct. 1  (Read 1292 times)

LifeOnPluto

I'm guessing MOB is close enough to SIL to know that she (SIL) has a pretty good relationship with her sister (the LW's wife). And it also sounds like MOB has met LW's wife on previous occasions. If my assumptions are correct, I don't think it was a big deal of MOB to invite LW's wife to the wedding as SIL's 'plus-one'. And I also think LW is being a kind of pill about it all.
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Twik

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But the invited guest didn't decide on inviting the new plus-one, the MOB did.  Maybe the SIL didn't want to go with the LW's wife.  I have a lot of SIL's, and some are fun, some not so much.   I think that it should be left to the originally invited person to pick her plus one.

Not necessarily.

If the original invitation literally just said 'plus one', meaning 'any random person you like to bring, even if it's a casual date who we don't know from Adam', then yes, if the guest's first choice cancels, logically they are entitled to pick another random person. But very often in this kind of discussion 'plus one' is used as a catch-all term for 'guests' significant others, whatever their legal status'. If this was the case here, and the invitation was actually sent to 'X and Y, your steady boyfriend who we only vaguely know', then if it turned out that Y couldn't make it, X would have been very wrong indeed to take it on herself to choose a substitute herself.

Well, Miss Manners doesn't agree with this. She says that if you want specific people there, you invite them *by name.* So, instead of giving your friend a "plus one" invitation, you invite them with their partners, if you know they have any. Using "Jenny + One" when you know that your friend  Jenny has been dating Jackie exclusively for a year is just being lazy.

She further said that if you do give a "+one" invitation to anyone, you have abdicate *any* say in who your guest brings. If you wanted them to bring a specific person, you should have told them.
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jpcher

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I agree. I always thought a +1 on an invitation meant that you could bring whomever you wanted to bring.

If in a couple situation then the SO should be named along with address on the envelope.

STiG

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Plus 1 allows you to bring whomever you like to the wedding, up and until you RSVP with your plus 1's name.  If you have already given the happy couple your Plus 1's information, if they now can't make the event, you don't get to just slide someone in there without the happy couple's OK.

If one of the two specifically invited people in a couple can't make it, the remaining person also isn't free to just add someone without OKing it with the happy couple.

If it was either of these two scenarios, I think the MIL was OK but should have let the invited sister know that it was fine to bring the LW's wife as her guest, in place of her plus 1 that can't attend.

If she was invited with a plus 1 and had not yet sent her RSVP, even if they expected her to bring her long term boyfriend, they can't object if she chooses to bring someone else.

Regardless of the circumstances, the LW is more than a bit full of himself.
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Aleko

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Well, Miss Manners doesn't agree with this.

Actually she does, because she was saying the same thing as me! As I said, we simply don't know - and almost certainly the aggrieved husband didn't know either - whether his SIL's invitation had identified her 'plus one' by name or not.

Hmmm

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Well, Miss Manners doesn't agree with this.

Actually she does, because she was saying the same thing as me! As I said, we simply don't know - and almost certainly the aggrieved husband didn't know either - whether his SIL's invitation had identified her 'plus one' by name or not.

I believe what Twik was stating is use of "Ms Sharon Stone & Guest" is not appropriate per Miss Manners on formal invitations. All guests should be invited by name. If you have a single guest and want to allow them to invite a partner, you contact them and ask whom you should include on the guest list and obtain that person's address. I know this rule well because my DH was forced by his mom (I stayed out of the argument)  to contact about 10 frat brothers to find out if they wanted to bring a date and if they did, the name of the date.  He was not pleased. But it also kept down the random stranger at our wedding. We had seen a couple of these guys meet a girl one weekend and drag her to a wedding the next and then we'd never see her again. If the guy didn't know the name of his "date" 8 weeks before the event, you can be pretty sure it's not a committed relationship.
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TootsNYC

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I agree. I always thought a +1 on an invitation meant that you could bring whomever you wanted to bring.

If in a couple situation then the SO should be named along with address on the envelope.

I agree, though often in conversation about the issue, people will use the term "plus-one" to mean "allowed to bring a date" even if that is restricted to a specific person, just because it's shorter.

but if the name is on the invite, then you don't get to switch (and if you know the person you should put it on).

Aleko

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My point was that "plus-one" quite often gets used to refer to what one might call secondary guests: the people you aren't close enough to to invite in their own right, but are being invited because they are married or otherwise attached to people who you are close to.

As in: suppose I were getting married and was inviting all my first cousins along with their spouses, live-in partners, steady boy/girlfriends - some of whom I know very well, some only a bit, and others who I only know by name. I'd put these people's names on the invitations - I'm old-school enough never to send invitations to "you and a guest" - but when discussing numbers, working out the table plans, and stuff like that, I'd say things like "We could put my cousins and their plus-ones on table 4 along with yours' and just using that phrase certainly wouldn't imply that if my cousin Sukey's husband couldn't come she was at liberty to decide to bring someone else!

So we don't know, and from the published letter it's very possible the aggrieved writer didn't know either, how the invitation was worded and whether his SIL had the right to choose a substitute guest for herself or not. So that whole line of discussion is a red herring.