Heather du Plessis-Allan: Invite half a couple? Expect half a present

The groom's defence "Why would I want to look at someone I don't know when I could have had a friend there instead?"

The cherry blossoms are out, the days are longer, it is warm enough to open the doors in the evening. You know what that means. It is wedding season.

Here is something to look forward to as those invitations start arriving. The invitations where your husband is invited but you are not.

I know this is a thing because I know a couple who are instituting this non-spouse policy.

This couple know a guy. They hang out with the guy but they have met the guy's wife maybe once or twice. So the wife doesn't need to be invited.

Plus, every person costs about $150 to feed, water and entertain. That is a lot of money to spend on someone whose name you can barely remember.

But it is the self-assurance this couple feels that really surprised me. They have a lack of guilt that would make the dictator of any small developing country proud.

The groom's defence goes something like this: "Why would I want to look at someone I don't know when I could have had a friend there instead?"

This bros-before-hoes wedding policy raises so many questions.

Does this couple belong to a generation so amazingly independent of their life-partners that they can cleverly negotiate bachelor-like freedom within the shared life of a stable marriage?

Have they not heard 2 Become 1, in which the Spice Girls explain pretty simply how marriage makes two people inseparable as far as social events go?

Aren't they worried their guests will have a bit of a stink time, unable to hold hands, sigh at romantic speeches and talk to somebody when no one else wants to talk to them?

Is this an example of GenerationY's notorious selfishness? Is this a trend? I Googled it.

It's not officially a trend yet but there is enough online evidence to suggest you won't survive another five springs without receiving one of these tricky ladies-leave-your-man-at-home type invitations.

I counted plenty of people online asking if this is acceptable. And, just as for my mates, it seems it always comes down to money.

The resounding advice online is that you can't invite a person without their plus one.

It's just not etiquette. How - the wedding planners ask - can you expect someone to travel to your idyllic summer wedding in the middle of a paddock on the other side of the country without another to keep them company?

And yet, somehow I'm proud of this couple for eschewing the tradition foisted on young couples.

First you decide you don't want to promise to "obey" the guy whose laundry you'll probably be doing for the rest of his life. Then you tell your mum you won't be wearing granny's wedding dress from 1952 no matter how much she insists.

Then you tell your slightly wild aunty she can't invite the boyfriend she has been seeing for two weeks.

By this stage you're empowered enough to tell the wives and husbands you haven't met that they are not invited.

Because, to be honest, if you're so tight with one half of the couple that they are invited to the wedding, yet the other half hasn't met you yet, they haven't made enough of an effort to earn the right to witness your nuptials.

Having said that, I'm instituting a policy of my own: Choose to invite only half this couple and you receive only half a gift.