This has turned out super rambly but the overall point is, while not a huge deal, I'm curious which you guys think is the most likely option of the below.
FI has a friend and co-worker who got engaged a month or so after us and is getting married two weeks before us. FI made the decision to invite everyone on his floor at work - about 30 people including spouses and guests. FI works for a large company so there is no way to invite everyone and this seemed to him like the best compromise. FI also understood that his co-worker was doing the same -- and his co-worker told FI that we would be invited to co-worker and bride's wedding. For our 140 person guest list that 30 people is huge, but co-worker reportedly was inviting 300+ so that's not such a big chunk to them.
Our invites went out early March, about 8 weeks and a few days from our date. FI expressed frustration that we were inviting so many work people when we hadn't gotten an invite from his co-worker and FI wondered aloud if his co-worker had decided not to invite us and the other office folks after all. I told him not to worry about it because they could have been sending theirs out the same time as ours, as we really sent ours out as early as possible within etiquette. Also, FI did what he thought best at the time for office politics and we can afford to host everyone we invited.
At the one month mark I asked FI if he'd heard anything and FI said that co-worker and his bride were "having trouble with the invitations getting to people". Well, their wedding is about three weeks away and we still have not gotten an invite yet. Co-worker and his bride have RSVP'd to us.
To be clear, I am not upset that we have invited them and they haven't invited us. It's not tit for tat. I would not begrudge anyone for not extending a wedding invite to me, especially having gone through this process. But I feel like I am being rude because we can't RSVP in a timely fashion and we are getting to the point where we need to decide what we are doing that weekend because we also have other events we could be attending -- my grad school reunion, a whiskey fest, etc. FI would prefer to go to this wedding over the other options but at this point we just don't know if we're invited.
In my mind they either:
1. Really are "having trouble" with their invitations getting to people (I assume this would be a lack of postage?) and are not bothering to rectify the situation either verbally (just tell us, "hey, you're invited, the time is this, the place is this, do you want to come?) or by issuing new invites.
2. Decided not to invite everyone they said they were and rather than owning it, are being chickens about it.
Which do you guys think it is? FI is planning to ask co-worker about it but I don't know when he'll get around to it.