You Aren't Invited

I'm learning that one of the awkwardest things to deal with as an almost-wed is not inviting people to your wedding.

I mean, we'd like to invite a lot of people, but we just can't invite everyone.  (Even though we practically have.  Good Lord.  I'm hoping like 40% of the people we're sending save-the-dates to don't show so we don't have to fork out more dough for extra food from the caterer and extra tables and chairs.)

I guess I'm particularly thinking about people we interact with regularly: departmental people and church folks.

I was putting a couple of save-the-dates in the boxes of some invited colleagues when an uninvited colleague walked in and checked his box.  I immediately went into awkward mode.  Mind you, he had no idea what I had in my hand, what I was doing and probably wouldn't have cared even if he did, but one overwhelming thought alarm went off in my head: You didn't invite him!  You didn't invite him! 

I don't know why I'm so worried about it.  Most reasonable people realize that two broke grad students aren't going to have lavish nuptials and can't invite the world.  But I have had church folk text me informing me that they were coming whether or not they were invited (in a "joking" way, but still) and certain other people have established a precedent of saying bold things to my fiancé and me, so I guess I'm not exactly paranoid.

In order to cut down on church awkwardness, we're just sending save-the-dates to the people closest to us by mail and will decide whether we want to have a "general invite" situation later.  I'm not terribly concerned about awkwardness with my home church folks. Though I am sending them to particular families, what will probably end up happening is a bulletin board post of the save-the-date or later invitation and since the wedding will be a nice 3 1/2 hour drive away (actually longer, since the property where we're marrying is nearly 30 minutes from the city where my fiancé and I live) from my hometown, only the diehard will make it.

But departmental awkwardness is another story to me.  I don't think anyone will say anything.  It's not like people who've gotten save-the-dates are going to be waving them around asking everybody else if they've gotten one too, as if they're free plane tickets to Hawaii or something.  But it would be much easier to decipher who got one and who didn't, if someone were into finding out that kind of thing.

There's a part of me that is extremely non-confrontational, but there's another part of me that would dare someone to have the audacity to ask why they weren't invited.  Like, part of me feels like, if someone would be audacious enough to ask that, I should be audacious to enough to tell them why, straight up.  We can't invite everyone and we didn't consider you to be close enough to us to want to invite you.  Or Since when did exes get invited to weddings?  You're practically an ex and you know it.  Nawl, son.  Or Hell would have to freeze over before I'd consider having your drama-laden presence at one of the most important events of my life.  No ma'am.  Or You wanna be a weirdo towards me for weirdo reasons and then be like, "Girl, I better get an invite," Um, naaa.

Ahem.

I guess invitation awkwardness is one of those soon-to-be-married folks' rites of passage.  That and fielding questions about where we're going to live.  Um, are you going to be shifting around an academic's collection of heavy books?  Are you going to be de-cluttering my hoarder's walk-in closet?  Are you going to be lifting and transporting any furniture?  No?  Oh, okay.