Oomis – that must have been uncomfortable. Did they personally invite you this way – I mean by phone or in person? I wouldn’t have had the guts to do that to people.
In EY, I think we have it the best, like I said before. No pressure to go to the whole chassanah – who has a whole night, especially when families get big and you can have numerous simchos close together (maybe even more than one on a night), so you go for what you can and at least the baal hasimcha knows that you wanted to wish him/her well.
I will say that the challenge then goes to the baal hasimcha to figure out how many meals to order. When I got married, we did not use meal cards in the invites nor did we request RSVP to indicate if they were staying for the meal, so how many meals to order??? I guess people just order some extra and have to figure out to make sure to take the extras home.