who to invite

lisakeary

Trying to keep my invites to 100 is very hard!  In my position at work I'm close to most everyone in a company of 50 employees, most of all of them are related to each other in one way or another.  I just don't know where to draw the line.  Advise - please???

J&K10910

In that case, I probably wouldnt' invite anyone from work, unless you're also friends outside of work (aka hang out together after work, and not just in the sense of "oh hey, a bunch of us are going to happy hour after work today", you would stay friends with them if you/they quit, etc). 

Summer2011Bride

Ditto PP. If you socialize with some outside of work on the regular, I might draw the line with them. Otherwise, it would be easier to not invite any of them rather than have to come up with an arbitrary cut-off.

ThankfulSnail

We kept our co-worker guest list to people who we'd spent time with outside of work, my bosses, and two women we call our "work moms" who were more excited than my dad was when we got engaged. I think there are a couple people at work who found out they were not invited and others were, and their feelings were probably hurt, but from what I can see, they understood. My best advice is to invite no co-workers, or only invite those who you have spent time with outside of work. If this is all of them, then I go back to saying you should just say no to inviting co-workers.

Ali092011

The typical advice to "invite in circles" can potentially work well for you here. For example, I only invited CWs from my department, which was the difference between inviting ten people and inviting fifty. I also invited both of my bosses.

Like PPs said, you could also only invite people you are genuinely close with outside of work (like, you've been to their homes, know their SOs and children, etc.). This can be a little fuzzy if you have a workplace that is prone to drama, though, because if you work closely with three people but only spend time outside of work with two of them, the third may feel excluded regardless.

The other option is to not invite anyone from work. Many couples make this decision.

It really depends on the specific dynamics of your workplace. If I had decided not to invite anyone from work, I know it would have been fine--people at my company get married without inviting CWs all the time. But if you're extremely close to some CWs and not at all close to others, excluding everyone just to avoid hurt feelings might actually cause more problems than it solves.

ETA: I know it sounds like a monumental conundrum, but most adults can handle not receiving an invitation to every single event in the world. Just make sure you limit the wedding talk around CWs you won't be inviting, and stress that you're having an "intimate" wedding when asked. Most people can take a hint and won't be tactless enough to outright ask if they're invited.

RebeccaB88

I appreciate the time you're taking to think about how to handle this. I found out last week that I was the ONLY person in our department not invited to a CWs wedding.  She even included other people that she knew only through work and didn't hang out with outside of work, but I was without a doubt not invited.  I only found out because our CWs who all were invited naturally assumed I was too, and asked me why I wasn't at the wedding.  I wasn't upset in the beginning, because I knew she had a budget and a guest limit at the venue, but the more people mentioned it, the more it has bothered me.  I mean, even the new people were invited.  On top of it, the CW bride scheduled me to work that day.  Even if she didn't intend it to, she sent me a clear message and while I can forgive, it's way harder to forget.  If you truly aren't able to include everyone, please be very careful about who you do choose to invite, and ask them to not share things with others.  Include everyone or no one if at all possible.