LOVE IT! :D

I think this is ridiculous, but I definitely see no problem with it the other way around. As in only inviting family and close friends to the ceremony to keep it more simple and private and then inviting others to the reception. Which obviously is not something that really cuts down on costs (other than perhaps being able to book as smaller ceremony venue) but I think can still be a nice way to do it for some couples.

SO's sister did this, as they got married in a very very small church, and I thought it was wonderful to be surrounded only by close friends and family for that moment, and not have her bombarded with a ton of people immediately after exchanging vows.

LOL not at all, it's only DOING it that means you have no right to complain about their faux pas :p

Re the whole B-list thing, a former coworker sent an email along the lines of this to a bunch of us at work A WEEK before the wedding.

Bill and I have not had the response from our friends and family that we had anticipated to attend our wedding. We realize this is short notice but would like for you to share our special day with us. The wedding is at _____ , and reception is at _____ . We hope to see you there.

I think it would have been a little less offensive if she had said "we obviously do not expect a gift from you." But the thing is...they were obviously doing this because they sank all this $$ into a wedding and their ROI was going to suck because no one wanted to come to it. :rolleyes:

Am I the only one that thinks that the the B-list thing isn't the worst thing in the world? I can imagine it working ONLY in certain situations:

1) You DO NOT tell some one they are on the B-list.
2) You really do want someone to attend, but maybe due to size restrictions/finances you just can't invite them. I know, I know, don't have a big expensive wedding if you can't afford it and don't pick a small venue if you want a big wedding. But I would imagine there has got to be SOME instances of a couple planning modest wedding that just can't invite everyone they'd like too...right?
3) Don't invite just because you want gifts.

Disclaimer: No, I don't have a B-list. My dad's family is gigantic (50 first cousins & their families...tons of aunts and uncles...my parent's wedding was 350 people!) and we had to cut out a lot of people. Yes, they are "only cousins", but for how many there are, we actually do see most of them pretty often, so it was a tough decision. There's no WAY we could do a B-list because if we invite so and so, then we HAVE to invite so and so. It just never ends so we decided to be very firm with who we are inviting.

I will agree though that the past few examples of B-lists shared in this thread are VERY rude!

SO MUCH AWESOME!

I personally don't think that there's anything inherently tacky/wrong about having a B-list. I do think that it's tacky to tell B-list guests that they were, in fact, on the B-list. That usually reeks of "you're not good enough to get a first round invite to our wedding, but good enough to buy us something."

I got something like this a few years ago. I don't like the bride to begin with (don't know the groom but he's pretty trashy as well), and they did it because they were getting fewer attendees than they had guaranteed with the caterer. This couple also had a honeymoon registry.

The B-list doesn't bother me if it's done discreetly and done in enough time that it doesn't look like a B-list.

I think I mentioned this before, but my husband and I had a B-list. We paid for the wedding almost entirely ourselves, and both have pretty large families. In our case, we did a big brain dump of everyone we'd possibly want to invite to our wedding, and then had to cut back to match our budget.

We both have pretty big families, so there were friends who ended up on the B-list. But dear God, we did NOT TELL anyone they were on our B-list! That's awful! We just sent the invites early enough and set ourselves a timeline that if we had X "nos" by Y date, we could invite Z more people.

Didn't really work, since most people dawdled to the very end to respond, but we did manage to get a few more people invited. We just sent them actual invites and it was well within the time frame to RSVP.

It wasn't a case of throwing a huge blowout wedding and wanting more people for ROI. These were truly people we wanted to invite, but couldn't afford to.

I have an aunt that took it upon herself to bring 5 additional guests to our wedding without asking. I was beyond pissed but lucky for her, since we got married on a yacht, a few people missed the departure time and these unwanted (and unknown) guests were able to have a table. Still, it was so rude of her to do this. She's notorious for crap like this amongst our family.

At my sister's women only bridal shower last August, she brought my uncle and 2 of his male friends to hang out with him AT THE SHOWER! Seriously? She's a loon. The men then proceeded to eat before we did & they helped themselves to cake & cupcakes before we had even finished eating our luncheon. My tacky aunt them made "to-go" plates for all of them while we were still opening gifts. Ugh! :rolleyes: :mad:

Um, why is this woman still being invited to family events?!

sounds like the seinfeld episode where elaine throws the shower for her "friend".

*sigh* Multiple reasons. First, she's my mom's older sister & my mom feels obligated (guilty?) to invite her even though we tell her not to :rolleyes:. Second, while she is as irritating & obnoxious as hell, we do like her children. If we invite my cousins to family events, we are forced to invite her. Third, she actually isn't invited to many family events. Unfortunately, my family is very big so someone (a cousin, another aunt or unvle) mentions an event so she invites herself. It's annoying.