Hi all- this is my first time posting on these boards but I've enjoyed reading up on all y'alls conversations over the past few months of my engagement!
My question is this: this weekend I am attending a "girls weekend" hosted by another friend of mine. There will be five other ladies besides myself, all of whom except one are invited to my wedding. A little background- I'm a few years out of college but have stayed exceptionally close with my high school friends, which is the group that this "girls weekend" will be comprised of. Two of them are to this day my best friends and will be co-maids of honor, one of them will not be in the wedding party but we are still extremely close and see each other often, and one of them (the hostess- I'll call her girl #4 for future reference) I am honestly less close with, see only 2-3 times a year, and she really only barely made the cut for the guest list because 1) we were extremely close up until about five years ago and 2) she is still much closer with the other gals I'm inviting. So that leaves the girl who is not invited- I see her about 2-3 times a year as well, almost always in the company of girl #4, but we didn't ever have the history of closeness and she isn't very close with any other girls in the group besides girl #4, which is why girl #4 got an invite and she didn't. Oh and overall our wedding is super small, these four ladies plus two college friends are the only non-family being invited since we are on a relatively tight budget.
So anyway, I don't know if you really needed all that information or not but my general query is just, how do I handle the awkwardness of hanging out with a bunch of people with whom the topic of my wedding will undoubtedly be part of the conversation when one of them is conspicuously not invited (and may not even be aware that she's not, since Save the Dates were just mailed out)? Any advice for steering the conversation away from wedding talk/not making it super obvious she's the only one in the group not invited? And finally, do I need to talk to her, either prior to this weekend or once invitations have been sent, and say upfront that she's not invited and why? Any advice would be appreciated!