Think About Your Single Guests

Argh!.......I was doing so well and then, I missed a week!

Apologies for no new #weddingwednesday blog last week, it was a crazy few days where I was up to my ears with late night fittings, making Ewok costumes for my twin nieces, running around delivering dresses to several wedding events and trying to fit a few hours of sleep in too! So the blog got benched for a week I'm afraid!

But this week, I'm going to chat about inviting single guests to your wedding.

Now, I am the perfect person to advise on this subject, I'm single myself and have been for a long time, I'm basically married to the job and any man that can put up with my crazy erratic schedule would quite frankly be a mythical creature! and I've also attended my fair share of weddings as a single lady, and in all honesty...... I hate it!

What you need to remember is weddings are essentially a celebration of love between 2 people who want to spend the rest of their lives together and the people that appreciate that the most are other couples, married or not, who are crazy in love and don't mind displaying their affection for one another on the dance floor at a wedding reception following several bottles of wine...... who do you think would not want to see this so much??? single people..... women especially!

Now, I can honestly say I'm not jealous of this, I'm actually not, this isn't the reason I dread attending weddings, the reason is the awkward third wheel situation..... if, like myself, most of your friends are married, or coupled up or have children etc you will spend the majority of your time, awkwardly bouncing between couples and playing the third wheel, shamelessly thrusting yourself upon people in a desperate attempt not to look like the sad singleton who didn't have a date for the wedding!

Yes, I understand that in some scenarios there could be several singletons and they can all group together and form a little crowd of their own but from my experience this is rare, or chances are I actually just don't know the other singles attending the wedding and that's even more awkward trying to speak with them..... like you're trying to pick a guy up at your friends wedding......no!

Now I'm not saying don't invite them! That may be a little rude, especially if they are your close friends! But just bear in mind that while they are very happy to be attending the wedding of a true friend they are at the same time dreading every minute of it! At the last few weddings I've attended, I've just not known what to do with myself! The wedding breakfast was fine as we were all allocated specific seats so those on my table were kind of stuck with me and probably felt like they had to involve me in some way as not to appear rude, but following this, when everyone breaks away in to their preferred groups I've made a dash for the loo and stayed there as long as I could get away with or I continuously make long trips to the bar which quite frankly doesn't end well!!!

Weddings, as we all know are expensive, so it's understandable that not everyone should have a 'plus 1' invite but have you maybe considered allowing your single friends an evening guest to join them later on? or speaking with them beforehand and asking if they are comfortable attending on their own or would they rather just come for the evening? As I know when you receive that

daytime invite and dread spending so much time alone at a social event, you still just politely accept instead of trying to explain to your friend getting married how out of place you will feel all day and that joining them in the evening to celebrate would benefit both, as the bride and groom will save on an expensive meal and the guest will feel far more comfortable and actually enjoy the festivities far more, as essentially weddings are a happy time, everyone should be enjoying themselves and no one should be sitting in a corner alone crying in to their wine (FYI this hasn't actually happened..... I'm just dramatising!)

You may not agree with me, and that's fine, not everyone is the same and some single folk will be tearing up the dance floor before the speeches are even over, but I personally struggle at weddings, which is weird because I practically live and breath weddings..... I love weddings in general..... I just don't like attending weddings alone! Well I've ranted enough for another week..... feel free to comment as you wish and once again thanks for reading Sammy xx