Wedding “Crashing”

Question

I have been to several orthodox weddings lately and noticed that there seem to be a lot of people crashing them. I have not seen this to the same degree at any other weddings.
First, a lot of people who are not invited come to the ceremony only. That’s not unusual. But I’ve also seen many more people come to dance and/or socialize, but they don’t eat anything and they view it that they are not stealing food or putting a burden of cost on anyone. For example, one wedding I went to recently had seating room for 120 guests (15 tables of 8 each), but there had to be close to 300 people dancing.
I’ve seen others come uninvited and they either share a meal with an invited guest they know or take an empty spot at the meal of a no-show. I’ve seen that happening at the exact tables where I have sat.
And there are people who come for the cocktail hour and feel they are not stealing because there is lots of food just being handed out that would otherwise go to waste.
Before I became friendly with so many orthodox people, I went to a lot of non-orthodox and non-Jewish weddings where if anyone crashed, it was usually just a single digit number of people. But I’ve never seen anything like what I’ve seen in the orthodox community here.
Is there any reason for this?

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Answers

  1. The Just Ask! - AskTheRabbi.org Team

    Religious Jewish wedding etiquette is definitely different from all other kind of weddings!

    When it comes to religious Jewish weddings there are normally three different kinds of guests and two different texts for the invitation. Family and close friends are usually invited for the whole wedding. This includes the reception, the Chuppah and the meal with the dancing afterwards. Others are invited to the Chuppah and/or the dancing afterward but they are not invited to the meal itself. From that group of invitees, most choose to either attend the Chuppah or to come to the dancing later on but they don’t normally do both.

    Very often people arrive for the dancing at the time indicated on their invitations, only to find that the meal is still in progress. There is normally a bar set up for these new guests, which can sometimes be very opulent. The new arrivals eat and dance and will hopefully enhance the joy of the Chattan and the Kallah.

    Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team