If you’re in the midst of planning your wedding, one of the most stressful parts is usually handling the guest list. You want your wedding to be filled with as many people you love as possible, including your coworkers, but you also have to pay for this wedding and each additional person adds a considerable expense to your wedding budget. While managing the guest list is challenging for almost everyone, there are extra considerations when you work for a small company. If you’re trying to figure out how to handle invites without offending anyone, keep reading to learn my top 3 tips for navigating wedding invites when you work for a small company.
Invite Other People First
I think it’s so important that you send out your save the date as soon as possible, so that you can start getting responses and seeing if you have any more room to invite someone else. If you feel that you’d like to invite more coworkers than you have space for currently, I would suggest inviting your other friends and family first and seeing how many additional spaces open up. As your coworkers may speak to each other about being invited (or not), I suggest inviting them all at the same point. You don’t want anyone to feel like they were your back up option. I suggest inviting your friends and family a month or two before your coworkers, so you can start to see how many invitations you have spare.
Consider Inviting No One or Everyone
If you don’t have the ability to invite everyone, carefully consider whether maybe the best course of action is to invite no one. Only you know how sensitive and close your coworkers are, but know that it can be an option to invite none of them so you don’t have to navigate making anyone feel left out. Likewise, if your company is very small, it may be worthwhile just inviting everyone so that you don’t have to worry about making anyone feel left out or unimportant. Be sure to send out your save the date postcards with plenty of notice so you can use any available spaces to invite more people.
Maybe Just Your Boss
If you really don’t have much room to invite your coworkers to your wedding, another acceptable way forward is to just invite your boss. Choosing to invite your boss is a great way to show respect to them, that they’re important to you and that you want them to be there for one of the most important days of your life. Because your boss is essentially at a different ‘level’ than your other coworkers, it makes it easier just to choose them to invite without offending anyone else.
Be Upfront
One of the best things to do is to let people know why you’re unable to invite them or blame it on your budget. Maybe you just want to keep your wedding small, and inviting too many coworkers would move away from that direction. Taking the time to let people know you’d wanted to invite them, but couldn’t for whatever reason, will make them feel important and valued to you.