Close friend broken up right after Save the Date, now expects me to invite her new partner – am I wrong to say no?
I’m getting married in London in a "small" wedding (100 guests total – half my side, many are family). From where I'm from, this would classify as an intimate wedding. For everyone else it’s a destination wedding; most people are travelling. I’m not having bridesmaids, groomsmen, or a wedding party in the traditional sense. Me and my partner are not from UK (international couple that met in London).
One of my closest friends (we lived together for a year, uni friends, she knows ~80% of my friends and even my fiancé’s friends) lives in another European city. When I sent the Save the Date in February, she was cohabiting with a long-term partner, which we knew very well. We invited both of them.
Later that same month, she broke up with him and immediately started dating someone new. They only became official now (3 months before the wedding) and are not cohabiting. When she broke up, I filled her spot from my reserve list (someone else on my reserve list got invited instead).
Now I think she’s expecting me to invite her new partner as a plus-one (she hinted it a few times). I don’t have any room to add anyone, we’re at capacity and I can’t include someone else.
Am I being unreasonable to say no? I’m very close to her, but I don’t feel I can invite someone I barely know, especially when I’m already at capacity and other close friends are coming single. She knows it's a small wedding and that we have capacity constraints (we are both from the same country so our definition of small aligns).
Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? How did you handle it, and was the guest’s expectation reasonable?
EDIT: I really appreciate all the perspectives and advice, thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts.
A few clarifications:
- If someone does drop out and we end up with spare capacity, I would obviously be more than happy for the new partner to come as a last‑minute addition. However, I'm not sure how likely this will be.
- Many of my other girlfriends from the same uni group are single and coming without a plus-one. I think this might be a cultural difference – where I'm from, if you’re single, you're never given a plus-one (destination wedding or not), nor did I expect one. So she wouldn’t be alone, and she’d be in the same situation as the rest of the single girls from our group.
- Accommodation also isn’t an issue. One of our uni friends lives in London and has offered to host all the single girls from the group coming to the wedding over the weekend – it’s basically a girls’ reunion. Also, she hasn’t disclosed that she’s in a new relationship to the rest of the group, so my other friends still doesn’t know about the new partner.