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Wedding Etiquette Forum
chica_zarca
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Should I invite bosses to shower if they declined wedding?
I work at a pretty big, close-knit company, and have 11 superiors in the 1-2 levels above mine. I went the "if you invite one, invite them all" approach, which was fine since I personally do like all of them and would've been pleased to have them attend.
However, 4 of them have declined and 1 hasn't answered yet. One who declined sent me a very apologetic email explaining that her cousin is getting married the same day (blood is thicker than water, I totally understood), though the others haven't mentioned anything to me at all yet. It's none of my business of course, but it does leave me a little unsure as to whether I should still have my sister (MOH) invite them to the shower or not...
I don't want the shower invite to come across as "sorry you can't make it, but give me a gift anyway" NOR do I want it to come across as "well if you can't come to one event, you can't celebrate anything else either". I don't want to look gift-grabby, but I don't want to seem snide about it either.
I'm leaning towards leaving them on the shower list anyway, and leaving it up to them if they choose to come, but figured I'd reach out to the community here to get some insight or feedback about whether this is appropriate or not.
Thanks!
However, 4 of them have declined and 1 hasn't answered yet. One who declined sent me a very apologetic email explaining that her cousin is getting married the same day (blood is thicker than water, I totally understood), though the others haven't mentioned anything to me at all yet. It's none of my business of course, but it does leave me a little unsure as to whether I should still have my sister (MOH) invite them to the shower or not...
I don't want the shower invite to come across as "sorry you can't make it, but give me a gift anyway" NOR do I want it to come across as "well if you can't come to one event, you can't celebrate anything else either". I don't want to look gift-grabby, but I don't want to seem snide about it either.
I'm leaning towards leaving them on the shower list anyway, and leaving it up to them if they choose to come, but figured I'd reach out to the community here to get some insight or feedback about whether this is appropriate or not.
Thanks!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Should I invite bosses to shower if they declined wedding?
Really, anybody that was invited to wedding is open to invite to shower also. Like you did with wedding invites, if you plan to invite any of them, I would invite them all. And I wouldn't exclude them just because they aren't able to come to wedding. If they were still coming to the wedding, would you invite them to shower? If so, then invite them... it shouldn't be dependent on their wedding RSVP.
Most of the people attending my shower aren't able to come to my wedding (its OOT wedding and we are only getting about 25% attendance). And I've had some people offer to throw me a shower just because they aren't able to come and want to do something to celebrate it. So, they may appreciate the shower invite even more since they aren't able to come to wedding. And an invite certainly isn't a mandate to attend or requirement to buy gifts.
Also, showers are typically more intimate events. If, for whatever reason, your bosses are declining the wedding then it stands to reasons that an even more intimate event will get declined too. Of course, you have no idea why they declined (and to ask would be rude), but I wouldn't want to risk rubbing my superiors the wrong way.
No one but family and one very close friend were invited to my bridal luncheon. Like PP's, I think that's a more intimate event.
Every shower I've been to in the last few years has been a giant blend of family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, old friends of the family, etc. I haven't been to a single one that was purely "intimate". So I'm ok with going that route myself. I did keep it to just the closest of the bunch and in-town people, so my list is sitting at about 40 plus the bridesmaids and mothers. They're almost all friends, since we're both from pretty small families. Between the 2 of us, we only have 7 female relatives.
To clear the record, I actually am quite close with all of my bosses and see most of them outside of work on weekends, at parties, happy hours, etc. (granted, I see some more frequently than others, but I did still want to be fair to all). I've worked there for almost 6 years and have held a variety of positions and responsibilities under each of them at some point or another as I moved through ranks. They're not just some faceless bigshots in corner offices or anything, but people who have been truly involved in my life.
To those who asked, I sent my invites out February 26th and asked for RSVPs by April 1st. My wedding is May 31st. I probably could've made the deadline a little later, but was eager to get a more accurate headcount so I could plan accordingly for party favors, table settings, seating charts, etc. Plus I know we have tons of procrastinator in the bunch and didn't want to give them so long they'd forget entirely. We're still waiting on at least 40 responses, but at least I have time to reach out to them one by one over the next couple weeks. My sister is leaving my bridal shower as a surprise, so I don't know when it will be or anything but I know she's going to do the invites soon which is why I was asking if I should cross them off or anything.
I think I'm leaning towards what nicoann said. If they were coming to the wedding, I'd love to have them at the shower. And if they choose not to come for whatever reason, that's fine. I'd just hate to exclude them unnecessarily.
PS: @TheGrimReaper, I did actually read all of the replies I got back to my discussions :-) Sorry I didn't comment back; I had kept planning to do it later and time just got away from me, next thing I knew, it just didn't seem worth bumping the thread again. (I haven't logged into TheKnot all that often unfortunately).
Our wedding is the weekend right after Memorial Day, so I assumed that people would need to be aware in case they were making vacation plans or had to make arrangements at work, etc. Not everyone we know is off on Saturdays, and they all need varying amounts of time to put in vacation time or to switch with somebody. I thought 'the sooner, the better'.
Also, I never said that I thought every woman should be invited to the wedding, but honestly, everyone invited to the wedding are people I care about anyway or else they wouldn't have been included in the first place. If I truly wanted "everyone", that would've been like, a 400 person wedding and a 200 person shower. Ridiculous. I know.
There are only 80 woman invited to the wedding, and I only put 49 of them on my shower invite list for my sister (and of those, 16 are bridal party and family, and 3 are out of town and likely won't make it, though I still wanted to at least include them), so that really only leaves 30 likely "guests"... That seemed fair to me......