
Up until last weekend, I had thought wedding guest etiquette was a fairly universally understood thing.
You arrive on time, make small talk with distant relatives and friends you’d never heard of before, nodded vigorously when asked if you’d enjoyed your meal, and had at least one dance before politely slipping off home to get out of your tight dress and too-high high heels.
But apparently I was wrong. There are countless of individuals out there who have no bloody clue about these rules.

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I had a guest tell me 3 days before the wedding she was vegetarian! We had picked a vegetarian canapé but due to some last minute packaging issues we could no longer have that option so we picked another meat option as no one had told us they were vegetarian. Thankfully our venue was amazing and came up with some canapés, entre and main for her. She then proceeded to tell everyone she was now vegan - while eating chocolate!
I also had 4 guests not turn up to the wedding - 2 did not even message to apologise or explain why they just didn't turn up. In fact we haven't even heard from them once and the wedding was 6 months ago!
I also had someone turn up uninvited after we specifically told him not to come as he was not invited. He came anyway and we found him a meal and seat because we had so many no shows. He then stood at the end of the aisle all in black so in every one of the photos of us walking down the aisle he is standing there in black looking grumpy. He then interrupted our first dance and also told my Pop who has dementia he was Prince Harry.
Then at the end of the night some guests unplugged my phone and put their own music on. Never mind me and my husband had spent hours collating a playlist that we wanted played at our wedding and represented us but the songs they played had swearing, references to drug use and crude language. We had specifically chosen songs that did not have any swearing as my family are religious and we wanted to have a relaxed romantic dance.
Someone also vandalised our fingerprint tree and ruined it - we wanted to frame it and have it as a momento of our wedding day and all our guests fingerprints and names but someone thought it was funny to ruin it.
Safe to say we had some of the worst guests and we really found out who actually cared about us and who faked it just for the free food!
Hang on - it takes no more than a minute out of *your* day to be polite to someone's date - who would probably love to say hello, thank you and congratulate you. Yes - one minute.
It's not that they don't have time in 'their day' to be polite to the impromptu guest it's that weddings are very expensive - they've spent countless hours organising the seating chart and they don't order extra meals for a just in case someone is rude enough to turn up uninvited. The reality is that person would not have a seat or a meal at the reception and the bride and groom now need to find that person a seat and meal instead of enjoying their wedding day they've spent months planning and thousands of dollars on.