If someone you haven't spoken to in 6,7 years
 

calls to inform you they are getting married and they'd love for you to come, is it just a ploy to get a gift? An unvitation, a la Seinfeldese?

Isn't an absence of 6, 7 years pretty much the cutoff point between "it's a shame we're not as close as we used to be" and "not in my life?"

Further, the wedding's a twenty hour drive. No shit.

I'm sort of stuck as how to respond. The socially graceful thing is to say, on the phone, unofficially, "Yeah," then decline when the proper invitation arrives in the mail. The wedding's all the way in November, which leaves plenty of time for me to think of an excuse.

The less proper yet more honest thing would be to say "No" right off the bat, and explain that if I any interest in seeing him and celebrating life's little adventures with him, it would've happened already.

Yes, we used to be friends, but isn't "used" to the operative word?

Tell her/him to go fuck themselves and buy there own gift because you'd rather keep the money. ;)

Did you ever date and it ended badly? Is it a "just so you know... " kind of invite?

Perhaps they have little to no friends and really would like you to come.

Perhaps they have too many friends and wish to give all of their other friends the impression they have.. way too many friends, because they're fabulous, of course.


I'd just say no if you don't want to go. Surely its no more rude than inviting someone to an intimate event when you haven't spoken to them in so many years?

My thought would be that the wedding is an opportunity to reconnect with someone who you've lost contact with for some time. It can cost a lot of money to have someone as a guest at a wedding (those meals don't come cheap!), no-one's gonna make an invite unless they really want the invitee to be there.

I think the key thing here for you is, do you feel a strong sense of friendship towards your friend? If you do, then I would agree w/blunderbuss and go ahead and re-connect.

You're hardly going to spark up a freindship again at his wedding, weddings are hectic, they're like the only time in your life when EVERYONE you know is in the same room, he's hardly going to have time to sit down for a few hours and talk about the old times...

^
Really? I've never been to a wedding, so I wouldn't know.

Lucky, lucky man.

Good point. Unless the dude figured I wouldn't make the trip, yet still be obliged to send a present. (Frankly, I don't see a way out of sending a present.)


Good point, too. Yet I haven't been difficult to track down, and neither was he. In fact, he had no trouble finding me to tell me about the wedding. I guess I don't feel a strong sense of friendship. If I had, we'd have been communicating with each other all these years, right?

Fuck it. I'm gonna send a $20 gift certificate to Outback Steakhouse and call it a day.

Contact with freinds (or friends of the past) works both ways. He's probably not contacted you all these years simply because you havn't contacted him. You've both probably been sitting there thinking the other doesn't like you, when actually you'd both be well up for drinking, merriment and a catch-up. Thats how this is stuff works, in my experience anyway...

After 6 years I don't see you're even obliged to get'em a gift. Congratulate him and leave it at that. Its his wedding, not yours. Just because he called doesn't mean you owe him anything. Of course it also depends on how close you were back in the day.

Plus, the life that's happening right there in front of you tends to be so all-consuming that, despite your best intentions, you forget that there is also a life beyond your immediate surroundings.

My girlfriend moans constantly about friends of hers who she has to do all the work to keep the friendships alive. I have to remind her every time that these friends have kids who take up most of their waking hours, and their "neglect" of her is probably because, once looking after the brats is done, it's quarter past midnight and all they're fit to do is sleep.

^^ this.

hey wait, that's MY girlfriend.
GET
OUT
OF
MY
BRAIN.

Amen to this.

None of these. It was a message on voicemail! I've been too busy saying "What the fuck?" to call back.

meh. ignore it. if you ever run into said friend and the message comes up, you say "what message? i didn't get any. you sure it was the right number?".

End of thread.

just say no