Office Etiquette for Inviting Coworkers

I spend time with very few of them outside of work (less than 5 coworkers). I love both of your pieces of advice, especially the part about, "if you wouldn't invite them to your house for dinner, you don't need to invite them to your wedding". It's a good rule to use.

I guess I'm concerned about favoritism and hurting people's feelings.

You've gotten good advice, but I'll add: don't hand out invites at work. Mail them. You don't want anybody who is not invited seeing you handing out invitations. You might even (privately) mention to those who are invited that you had to keep the guest list small and you'd appreciate their discretion at work.

Also had this problem. I stuck to inviting people I socialize with outside of work along with the ones I have worked directly with for years (my shift). I work in the hospital so people have to cover weekend shifts, so I wouldn't be able to invite everyone anyway. I also mailed the STDs and am refraining from talking about it at work. Some have mentioned it but luckily it hasn't been a problem yet.

You all are amazing with giving advice on this! Thank you for calming my nerves and giving me good tools to use moving forward

This seems a lot easier in a big office. What do you do if you work in a small office ( 8 people including my director)?

Kesar that is a whole other ball game-I agree. However, I think that the same rules would apply. If you wouldn't invite them to your house for dinner, or if you wouldn't talk to them if you moved to a different company-don't invite them. I feel like I've had an awakening on this from everyone's advice. If you look back on your wedding photos in 10 years, are you going to be thrilled that they were there? Will they make your day happier?

Following as I have similar questions!

I'm only inviting the girls I work close with everyday and that I talk to and see outside of work

Thanks you guys, sorry to invade on your thread @futureMrsTrevino. I keep going back and forth about who to invite and who not to since we all are int he same space and talk about a lot out loud. One of my coworkers ( who I was not planning on inviting) point blank asked me if she was invited !!!!!! I was horrified and had no clue what to say; after that I started rethinking if I should just invite all of them to make it easier.

But after hearing all this advise, I think I will stick to my original plan to just invite work friends and director. 5/8

I work with 300 people. I literally only invited 7 coworkers that I am very close to. I asked them to keep it on the down low. They didn't discuss it openly at work, I mailed the invites to their house, they didn't post pictures on Facebook, etc

I'm going through a similar struggle. My boss at my last job was an amazing mentor to me, so I wanted to invite her because of everything she did for me to help me develop as a professional. But... I don't work there anymore : / So now I dunno if I should invite her.

I have read that it's polite to invite your boss, so you could get away with just inviting bosses and not coworkers.

My co-workers are all fantastic so it was hard, but ultimately I just made the rule that I'd only invite them if I've hung out with them outside of work on multiple occasions, which brought it down to 4 out of 20ish people.

I originally had all my co workers on the invite list because I wanted to invite them -- and I still do! Its just when it came time to make some cuts I had to go for that first -- because besides work functions i've only hung out with a few and those will be the ones i'm inviting (its the two girls I work with). The other guys in the office also are salesmen and would have to take off a half day as we are getting married on a Friday so i'm using that to my advantage/as my excuse. Most of them probably wouldn't come anyway because i'd only be inviting them and their spouse and not any of their children.

I work with 80 people with 12 on my actual team. I invited 5 people but I spend time with them outside of work every week.