💌 My best friend did not invite me to her wedding and I still do not know why

Found out from a mutual friend's story on Instagram, three weeks after the fact, that Reshma got married in a small ceremony in Banjara Hills and I was not there, was not even told it was happening until it was already over. Ten years of friendship, since we were both in the ninth grade at the same school, and I learned about her wedding the same way I learned about a stranger's engagement, by scrolling past a photo of a mandap I did not recognize. We had gotten quieter over the past year, mostly her being buried in planning and other life changes, nothing that felt like a fight or anything either of us would have called a problem out loud at the time. We still sent each other reels most weeks, still commented on each other's photos, none of it read like distance while it was happening. When I asked her directly why I was not there, she said the guest list stayed small, immediate family and a handful of close friends, which would sting less if I did not spend a decade assuming I was exactly that handful. She has not offered anything past that one line, and I am not going to keep asking for a fuller explanation she clearly is not planning to give. Her mother, who I have known almost as long as I have known her, still asks after me when we run into each other at the market, which somehow makes the silence from Reshma herself feel stranger rather than smaller. We still text sometimes, short things, nothing real. I keep rereading her message looking for something I must have missed the first four times. Does a friendship survive something like this, or does it just keep existing on paper while both people quietly know it already ended the day the invitations went out?

A school friend of mine skipped inviting me to her engagement, and I stewed on it for months. When we finally met for chai, she said she'd panicked about numbers and felt too embarrassed to tell me.

Found out about a close friend's wedding through someone else's photos too, and the not knowing why hurt more than missing the wedding itself would have. Never got a clear answer when I finally asked either, just a vague comment about keeping the guest list small, which did not fully add up given who else ended up being there on the day itself.