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If you are sitting at an awards dinner listening to boring speeches or staring blankly at powerpoint presentations then sitting together is not a problem; however if you are in an environment where liquor is being served, music is playing loudly and there is a call to dance, if men and women are seated together one can certainly be concerned that it may lead to mixed dancing.
I love a good smorg so I usually reply that I will attend the chuppah but not the meal because I have a prior engagement. So now I enjoy a really good meal (the smorg), participate in the simcha, leave nice and early and it doesn’t cost me much. Most of the time I don’t even attend the chuppah, as long as the bal hasimcha sees me at the smorg I am all good 🙂
“Funny thing, just today I recieved a wedding invitation envelope, WITHOUT THE INVITATION!!! Hey what does that mean? You’re uninvited?!?”
It means, stay home, fill envelope with cash and mail back.
I don’t quite know what the “large family” has to do. Does that imply that coming from small families makes a difference? Are people supposed to be supported for the rest of their lives by their families? What you appear to be saying is that the yunge leit both have no marketable skills – that is a problem!
I liked the way my Rabbi made his daughter’s wedding. It was a 5 Towns Rabbi, quite a wealthy individual but still problematic to invite everyone so the wedding went as follows (I think it was at Atares Avroham). Before the chuppah there were Hors d’oeuvres, after the chuppah was basically a massive smorg, and everyone sat where they wanted at the tables and there was plenty of dancing. Then most people left and mostly the family remained for the sitdown meal. How smart!! Best wedding that I ever went to.
That’s the beauty of category (2), if you can’t fit them all in and no one sits down except relatives how can someone complain? It is only if Reuven sees Shimoen at the sitdown that Reuven will be hurt thinking, “am I not as good a friend as Shimoen?”, but if both are not seated and the only ones they see being seated are relatives then the only conclusion is that the bal hasimcha has B”H so many friends that they could not seat all of them. In fact, if this catches on, we would see no one but relatives being seated since having people seated would imply that they do not have that many good friends and were able to fill the second catory of the takahnah!
To me, a reasonable takana would look something like this:
(1) Invite all relatives for sit down up to first cousins. This takes care of the major issue that people throw up as to why a fixed maximum doesn’t work – “well what if they have a large family?”.
(2) Invite up to 50 (or some other fixed number) non-relative guests for sit down. If you can’t satisfy this requirement without getting into hot water then invite NO ONE in this category for sit down.
(3) Everyone else to join for shmorg, chuppah and dancing.
Simple formula with least number of machlokahs.
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I am in a situation where the other side wants an elaborate Bucharian wedding but will contribute nothing, not to the wedding or to the photographer or music. He is a Bal Teshuvah, the rest of the family have almost no sheichos to yiddishkeit. The chosson claims that his guests are generous and the money will be used to help pay for the wedding, problem is that he will be bringing in 50 guests and we have 200. So instead of having a wedding where both sides pay 50/50 or where I pay for a modest wedding and they pay for FLOP I am now expected to basically foot most of the bill for what could only be described as a party for the rich. They even suggested that the young couple take out a loan for the wedding!!! My daughter does not go for this, she says that she would like to walk away from the wedding with some money for them to begin their lives. He has a $70k student loan to pay off and my daughter has a $170k loan to deal with. For the few hours of “partying” it is simply not worth it! We have a case of the tail wagging the dog.
My take will be simply to make (research) all the arrangements myself, present my finding to them (the chosson) with the take it or leave it attitude and hope the two kids see it my way and that they weather the storm. He has a mother and a divorced sister with child and a father who has nothing to do with him. I am retired living in Florida on a fixed income with one more daughter to marry off so I really don’t have much options.