Couples will naturally want their wedding to be as close to their vision of the big day as possible, but there are some decisions that they might worry will rankle with some guests. For instance, will working guests feel okay with a weekday wedding, or will parents be offended if kids are banned?
Potential weddinggoers, though, are largely relaxed about most of these dilemmas. Fully 83% of the public see a weekday wedding as perfectly acceptable, while nearly eight in ten (78%) feel it’s fair for couples to ask guests not to post photos of the wedding on social media. Inviting some guests to only certain parts of the wedding also has broad approval, with 71% of Britons seeing it as an acceptable practice.
While many guests would undoubtedly prefer an open bar, opting for a cash bar instead is not going to offend many guests, with 74% of the public feeling it’s okay for couples to leave guests to pay for their drinks. Likewise, around two thirds of Britons (68%) are happy for couples to ask for cash instead of gifts, with just 23% viewing this as objectionable.
Around six in ten Britons (58-60%) think it’s okay for couples to have a wedding abroad in a country neither of them are from, or to have a church wedding if they do not regularly attend church, though with 28% feeling either of these choices are not on.
A clear majority of Britons (56%) also think it’s acceptable for a couple to not allow young children at the wedding, with this figure identical among just those who are parents of children under 13, even if 35% of the public think this choice is in poor taste.
Less popular is holding wedding events over multiple days, which the public tend to see as unacceptable by 47% to 39%, while the practice of barring single guests from bringing a plus-one is frowned upon by 56% of Britons, with just 31% seeing this as reasonable.
Who should you invite to a wedding?
One of the toughest decisions that the to-be-wed have to make is who should and should not be on the guest list, with some couples sometimes feeling pressured to draw a line that includes far more distant relatives and loose friends than they feel happy with.
However, few Britons feel that couples actually hold a huge number of obligations about who should be on the guest list, instead feeling that it’s largely up to couples who they invite.
Even when it comes to close family members (e.g. parents and siblings), just half of Britons (51%) think a couple have an obligation to invite them, with nearly half (45%) feeling it’s well within a couple’s rights to leave them off the list, if they want to.
Similarly, less than half of Britons (45%) feel that a couple’s closest friends automatically fall into the ‘must invite’ column, with 52% believing it’s up to the couple if these chums do or do not receive an invite.
Just a fifth of Britons (20%) feel that invitational obligations extend to members of the wider family, such as cousins or aunts or uncles, while only 11% feel that close colleagues are a necessary presence at the wedding. This proportion falls to a mere 4-6% when it comes to nearest neighbours, old friends, and distant family members (such as third cousins).
Regardless of the personal relationship, one in six Britons (17%) feel that couples have an obligation to send out a wedding invitation to those who invited at least one of the couple to their wedding.
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Photo: Getty