After pandemic delays, a new dilemma: Disinviting wedding guests

(Year of the Wedding)
Brissa Ortega and Devin Joll haven’t decided on the best way to inform some 35 of their friends, relatives and co-workers that they are no longer invited to the couple’s wedding in November.

Ortega, 33, a product marketing analyst at software security company Synopsys, and Joll, 34, at first planned to marry in August 2020. They had invited about 80 guests via phone and word-of-mouth before postponing the event because of the pandemic, telling any who asked that they planned to reschedule.Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
After considering new dates in August 2022, as well as in April 2023, the couple settled on Nov. 27. While replanning their wedding, they noticed “a spike in prices” charged many vendors, Ortega said. To reduce their expenses, she and Joll, who live in Santa Clara, California, whittled down their guest l to around 45 people before booking their venue, a resort in California’s Napa Valley, earlier this month.
Now that they have secured a location, they face a conundrum: how to inform the uninvited — or whether to tell them at all. “I don’t think for the time being we are going to say anything,” Ortega said, “just because it is going to be such a small wedding” compared with the event they had postponed.
Although etiquette has grown more relaxed, revoking wedding invitations is still seen some as a major faux pas. But the lingering pandemic has forced couples to do just that over the past two years, for reasons including changing COVID-19 protocols, rising costs and a wave of postponed events that has left many scrambling to find available venues.

Even if invitations were only delivered via word-of-mouth, guests should always be told when they have been disinvited, said Elaine Swann, an etiquette expert and founder of the Swann School of Protocol in Carlsbad, California. She suggests disinviting people the same way they were invited. If guests received save-the-date cards mail, for instance, they should be notified mail that they are no longer invited.
No matter the medium, couples should be transparent about what led to their decision, Swann said. “This is where it is acceptable to be very honest and say, ‘We’ve decided to have a much smaller affair.’”
Mary Guido, who runs Mary Guido Atelier, a wedding planning business in Washington, D.C., recommends being “both prompt and personal” when informing guests that they have been disinvited.
After the pandemic set in, she and her now-husband, Nicholas McMurray, 33, drastically downsized their nuptials on May 30, 2020. Guido and McMurray, managing director of public policy at ClearPath, an organization with a focus on clean energy, kept their date but opted instead for a self-uniting ceremony at the Tregaron Conservancy in Washington with only a photographer present. Their previously invited guests — there were 175 — were disinvited phone.
“They were very compassionate and understanding,” said Guido, 30, who is also director of global events for the International Women’s Forum.
the time Ashley Montufar, 31, and Zachary Burgess, 30, decided to postpone their original wedding date of Sept. 26, 2020, they had already sent save the dates to roughly 100 guests, who were first notified about the change of plans via social media, phone and word-of-mouth.
After postponing because of COVID-19, the couple, who live in Millington, New Jersey, didn’t immediately want to reschedule for the same reason. To afford themselves some flexibility, they initially held off on detailing any future plans, simply telling guests that the wedding was on hold and that they were looking into new dates.
Montufar, an engineering associate at ExxonMobil, and Burgess, a digital and analytics lead at consumer health care company Haleon, ultimately decided to exchange vows before five family members in June 2021, on the rooftop of the William Vale Hotel in New York. A reception would follow months later, in September. For reasons including cost and the safety of their guests, they chose to invite only 40 people to that event, which they held in the backyard of their home.

Before the reception, those on their original wedding guest l received one of two postcards in the mail. One, as Montufar put it, told recipients: “We eloped — but come celebrate with us on Sept. 4, 2021.” The other conveyed the news that the two had legally wed and included a link to a website displaying photos and videos from the ceremony.
The couple considered reinviting people from their original guest l to their reception when some last-minute pandemic-related vacancies emerged. But they ultimately chose to fill those seats with other acquaintances, such as siblings of some of the friends in attendance.
Montufar worried that decision might upset their disinvited guests who saw photos of the reception on social media. “I felt so bad,” she said, “because obviously they saw one of my good friend’s little sers there, and it’s like, ‘Oh, they invited the little ser but they didn’t invite me.’” No one has since expressed disappointment to the couple about their invitation being revoked, but Montufar still feels guilty about doing so, she said.
Because it can appear disingenuous, reinviting guests can be as much an etiquette minefield as disinviting them, said Tracy Taylor Ward, owner of the event planning company Tracy Taylor Ward Design in New York. But these days, “Given the state of the world and ever-changing pandemic conditions, we encourage everyone — couples and their guests — to give each other grace and operate under the assumption that loved ones are acting with the best of intentions,” she added.
If reinviting a previously disinvited guest, couples should “be as honest as possible” while taking an informal approach, said Gayle Szuchman, president of Events Gayle in Norwalk, Connecticut. “Even consider adding some humor,” Szuchman said, “something like, ‘Let’s try this again,’ or ‘Please be our guest, again.’”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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