It’s Time to Stop Inviting Plus-Ones to Weddings

In the world of American wedding etiquette, plus-ones are straightforward, officially speaking. According to Lizzie Post, the great-great-granddaughter of the manners icon Emily Post and caretaker of her dynasty at the Emily Post Institute, the rules go like this: Granting a plus-one to single guests, especially those who are traveling or who don’t know many other attendees, is nice—but not required. Inviting both members of a “serious” relationship, meanwhile, is absolutely essential. To split a couple up (even if you don’t know your friend’s partner at all, even if the partner is a jerk) would be “the height of rudeness,” Post told me. Al righty then, a definitive answer.

Putting the theory into practice, though, can get a lot more complicated. Do you owe a plus-one to your bestie who’ll know plenty of people but just got), or living together; Post suggested that a more modern guideline might be whether the relationship has lasted six months or longer—though she acknowledged that defining a well-established couple isn’t so easy in real life. Hosts tend to want clear codes to follow, yet what principles could possibly please everyone? “It’s a conversation that I have with literally every one of my clients,” Kaitlin Ford, a wedding planner in California, told me. “Nobody really knows what to do.”