CN: FI and I work in the same office, and our coworkers are talking about throwing us bachelor / bachelorette parties. We won't be able to invite all of them to the wedding. Are we obliged to decline?
My fiancé and I work in the same office, and have for about a year. We met a long time before - we've been together for seven years - but were unemployed at the same time and got jobs at the same place. Our office is medium-sized, about 100 people, and it's a young, close-knit place. We got engaged when we'd been working there for a few months, but we're just telling people as it comes up naturally, and we never made some announcement, but by now I think most people know (I must get asked about the wedding plans at least once a week).
Unfortunately - though not surprisingly - we can't afford to invite all of our coworkers plus their partners to the wedding. We've discussed inviting a couple of people we socialize with, plus our bosses and their partners, but we really haven't finalized anything yet. (We're going to play it by ear - if we know via word of mouth before we send out our invites that less friends/family will be attending, then maybe we can expand our invite list, but in the meantime we have kept mum on the guestlist.)
The long and the short of it is, some of our coworkers have discussed throwing us bachelor and bachelorette parties. Knowing that we can't invite them all to the wedding, are we obliged to decline? What if they offered to throw a shower? It might just be idle talk, and I'm fine either way, but I just don't want to commit some faux pas by agreeing.
Edited to add: Seeing it all typed out (and the first couple of responses) makes feel like the whole situation is weird and I'm weird for not even paying attention to the weirdness. Ick. I swear it didn't sound so strange before ... my workplace is pretty casual, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if they've done this sort of thing before. But still. I now feel weird. Carry on.
