I'm less than 7 weeks out from my wedding, and now that we're getting our RSVP's in, I'm a little disappointed. Our first-choice venue was a beautiful, architecturally-significant, historical home. Unfortunately, its maximum capacity is 100 guests. That meant that we would've been able to invite our families and closest friends, but our coworkers would need to be dropped from the guest list. I work at an architectural firm, and I'm pretty close to my coworkers. I felt bad that the people who were most likely to to appreciate the architectural venue would be the ones who wouldn't be able to come, so we ultimately decided on a bigger, more boring venue so that we could invite them all.
We've gotten some declines to our invitations, and at this rate, I'm pretty sure we're going to end up with less than 100 guests even including our coworkers. I'm feeling a bit let down that we most likely could have had our wedding at our dream venue, and my coworkers would've been able to join us. It didn't occur to me at the time that I could have gone with the nicer venue, and told my coworkers that I would extend them an invitation if the room opened up. When I first started planning, I immersed myself in wedding etiquette. I became too worried about offending people, and I forgot that my guests are rational, understanding, kind people. Seriously - I asked my best coworker friend this morning if she would've been offended if I'd gone with the dream venue and having to "b-list" her, and her response was, "Why didn't you do that?!" Even with the chance that she wouldn't have been able to attend, she would've loved to see the pictures from our wedding at the other venue. It's making me wish I'd asked her that question a year ago.
What do you guys think? Is it ever okay to go against etiquette? Why don't people just ask their guests what they would find offensive, rather than assuming it might be rude and potentially losing out on something they really want?
Has anybody else gone through a realization like this? I just feel like I missed out and it's upsetting me.