Handling Guest List Problems with Bickering Former Couples

Guest Lists, Wedding Reception, Wedding Venue

Sometimes you have to invite both bickering former partners. Here's how to handle it.

Wedding guest list compilation sometimes needs to go farther than usual. There is sometimes a delicate situation that comes up – you need to invite both former spouses or even former business partners. Here’s how you handle this.

The Bickering Former Partner Situation

Whether it’s former business partners or freshly broken up romantic partners, it is a sensitive situation at your wedding. Typically, you’re friends with both ends of that equation so it’ll feel like you need to make a King Solomon level of decision. But you don’t have to split the couple and decide who you get to keep. No, there is a way that both can attend your wedding and reception.

This couple’s inability to be civil to each other creates much high drama. That drama feeds the problem itself and makes everyone around them miserable. But your duty is to have them there and handle it in such a way that it neutralizes the problem itself.

The Wedding with the Hatfields and McCoys Attending

There are some tricks for the wedding ceremony when the feuding partners are attending.

  • Give them arrival times that are ½ hour apart, preventing them from standing in line together.
  • Have assigned seating. Put their seats equally far away from the front and far away from each other side to side, avoiding them having a line of sight of the other. Create a buffer zone of friends around each of them.

These three items will keep a lid on their explosive nature. If done perfectly, they won’t even know the other is there. Then the wedding is a pleasant experience for both of them – and everyone else at the wedding ceremony.

The Wedding Reception Plan

At the wedding reception, keep on the mission of keeping this couple apart. Here are some suggestions:

  • Make the Villa Ragusa Event Coordinator aware of this situation. We will do what we can to keep the situation defused.
  • Assign one of the wedding party to interact with one of the problematic couple and another person to be the point of contact for the other.
  • If group family photos are required, put them at opposite edges of the photo.
  • Consider an alcohol-free wedding reception.
  • Avoid any mention of their split.

Additional Help at the Reception

Remember you have help with those former partners all around you. Always feel free to mention the couple to the Villa Ragusa event coordinator, your wedding planner and your friends. This takes the worry off you. They won’t be able to spoil your wedding.