Penetrants range from unwanted to welcome at wedding parties

For their wedding on January 3, Dazzle Deal and Levi Dunn initially planned to buy a package with as few guests as possible allowed by their wedding venue, Sunset Castle in Henderson, Nevada.

In addition to the pandemic, the couple was anticipating that few people would attend because their family members are known for not always keeping to their commitments, said Dazzle Dunn-Deal, who is 42 years old and works in customer service. (She and her husband, a 30-year-old tour guide, joined their surnames after getting married. “Dunn-Deal” sounds like “done deal”.)

With the money they would save with a smaller event, the two, who live in Las Vegas, intended to spend their honeymoon in Egypt.

But later, with the invitations already out, more relatives than they anticipated told the couple that they intended to attend; some had already purchased airline tickets. The Dunn-Deals decided to cancel their travel plans, give up on hiring a photographer, and instead use the money to throw a bigger party.

Closer to the wedding date, though, some guests began to say they wouldn’t. Some withdrew due to bad weather, others for different reasons. Dazzle’s brother, an engineer at a casino in Laughlin, Nevada, was not allowed to miss work.

When they realized they would have a serious guest shortfall, Dazzle and Levi feared they would have to pay for the people who weren’t going to attend. The buffet was asked if there was any flexibility regarding the number of guests. But, Dazzle said, the response they received was that “once you’ve signed the contract, there’s no change.”

So she shared an open invitation to the event on a Facebook group for weddings in Las Vegas. Eight people they didn’t know ended up showing up.

“I made new friends,” Dazzle said. She invited some of them to her husband’s birthday barbecue the following week.

People generally prefer that there are no strangers present at their wedding. Nobody wants to pay for a stranger’s champagne, nor do they want to see someone they don’t know make a pass at one of the bridesmaids. But a confluence of factors is changing this situation.

Wedding guest lists are fluid by nature, but due to the pandemic it is even more difficult to predict how many people will be in attendance. And Covid is not the only reason for the unpredictability: in a year when 2.5 million weddings are expected in the United States, a record number, some guests may not have space in their schedules. In addition, weddings celebrated on weekdays are increasing, which school or work can make it difficult to attend.

At the same time, event-hosting firms, many of which have suffered heavy losses in the past two years, are making their rules on guest numbers clearer and more inflexible, said attorney Leah Weinberg, owner of Color Pop Events in New York.

“Pretty much all wedding planners changed their contracts after Covid,” she said, noting that the number of guests is usually set when the space is booked, although payment is made closer to the date of the event. “They say you can increase the number of guests, but not reduce it.”

To avoid the embarrassment of empty tables or to prevent hundreds or even thousands of dollars from being wasted when guests drop out, more couples are now filling empty seats with people they are only slight acquaintances with, or even strangers — welcome crashers. , so to speak.

Last October Jessica and Anthony Fanara, both 27, attended the wedding of an unknown woman near their home in Holtsville, New York. Jessica Fanara, who cares for her son at home, learned of the event held at the Three Village Inn in Stony Brook, New York, through an open invitation shared on a Facebook group for weddings on Long Island.

“People asked, ‘How did you meet the bride?’ And I said ‘on Facebook,'” Jessica said.

She and Anthony Fanara, who works for FedEx, enjoyed meeting the people they shared a table with, so much so that they invited two of them to fill seats at their January wedding.

That same month, weeks before Carla Marie Stehman and Mehul Doshi’s Chicago wedding, a three-day party from February 10 to 12, Chicago City Hall began requiring proof of vaccinations in restaurants and other enclosed spaces. One such space was the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, where their reception would take place.

“We lost 25 people to the vaccination requirement in Chicago,” said Stehman, 40, who is a professional wedding officiant. In the weeks before the wedding, 45 of the expected 340 guests said they would not be able to attend. Stehman and Doshi had agreed to a minimum number of 330 guests, at a cost of $250 per head.

Due to the pandemic, they had already twice postponed their wedding, which combined elements of her American and his Indian traditions. And since the date was in the winter, the couple, who live in Chicago, couldn’t easily make the event outdoors.

“I said, ‘I don’t want this to go to waste. I bet there are a lot of people who would enjoy seeing what a fusion wedding looks like,” Stehman said.

In addition to inviting friends who were not on the original guest list, Stehman and Doshi, a 42-year-old architect, posted an invitation in a private Facebook group. Dozens of strangers offered to attend the wedding and 30 actually did, filling more of their tables at the reception.

“Given the cost per plate,” Stehman said, “we couldn’t leave those places unoccupied. People didn’t know me, but they came, participated, met our friends and family, and spent the night dancing with us.”

She has since shared brunch with some of the strangers who attended her wedding. One even hired Stehman, a pastor at Universal Life church, to officiate at his own wedding.

“And I’ve been invited to two of these people’s weddings,” she said. “One of them is full, but she asked me: ‘If someone refuses, will you come?’.”

Translation by Clara Allain