Thursday, June 19, 2008

Guest list: Etiquette problems US/France

French weddings: we have 3 guests lists.
  1. Ceremony only, as you share that with as many people as you can. You can invite everyone you know so they see you getting married. In fact any body can walk in the church during the wedding.
  2. Vin d'Honneur (wine of honnor) which is cocktail hour. Here you invite neighbors, people you are close to, but not enough for a dinner invitation.
  3. Dinner, you invite people really close to you.
Of course people invited for dinner are also invited for ceremony and vin d'honneur, as well as people invited for vin d'honneur are invited to the ceremony.
Now you can see how confusing it can get, because in the US it is rude to invite people to the ceremony and not the reception.
But it worked out because people coming from the US were invited to the dinner anway. The other ones only got an announcement/ceremony only invite.

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