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Wedding/Co-worker Etiquette
Susan Delgado
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So here's a question some friends and I were discussing... If you work in a small office where most everyone knows each other and are fairly well connected to each other, how do you go about announcing a wedding without offending people or even just announcing your name change (if you decide to change it) and not alienate office friends?
The other premise is that certain office friends that you are particularly close to would be invited, others would not.
My friend, R, says that you just don't tell anyone, except maybe a brief email to tell people to use your new name. If they get offended for not being invited they can suck and deal because it's your day, not theirs.
My friend, V, says you should share the happy new/occasion with your co-workers (since it's a small office) but not make it public that you're inviting some people but not others and if people are offended they didn't get invited then take the time to explain why you didn't or couldn't.
Personally, I don't know. I feel like I'd like to share that news if I was getting married, but also I wouldn't want to have to explain to everyone my motives for inviting who I wanted to my wedding. I feel just a sudden name change announcement in a pretty tight-knit office would be a big brush off to most people and leave them feeling jilted, but yeah, it'd be my day and I'm paying for it, so I can invite or not invite anyone I want.
Granted, I'm not getting married anytime soon, but this really has me curious about what the current etiquette is for these kinds of things.
The other premise is that certain office friends that you are particularly close to would be invited, others would not.
My friend, R, says that you just don't tell anyone, except maybe a brief email to tell people to use your new name. If they get offended for not being invited they can suck and deal because it's your day, not theirs.
My friend, V, says you should share the happy new/occasion with your co-workers (since it's a small office) but not make it public that you're inviting some people but not others and if people are offended they didn't get invited then take the time to explain why you didn't or couldn't.
Personally, I don't know. I feel like I'd like to share that news if I was getting married, but also I wouldn't want to have to explain to everyone my motives for inviting who I wanted to my wedding. I feel just a sudden name change announcement in a pretty tight-knit office would be a big brush off to most people and leave them feeling jilted, but yeah, it'd be my day and I'm paying for it, so I can invite or not invite anyone I want.
Granted, I'm not getting married anytime soon, but this really has me curious about what the current etiquette is for these kinds of things.
Go then, there are other worlds than these.
Susan Delgado on
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Some people will get offended no matter what you do, so best you can hope for is a nuetral outcome. I would make the announcement but not on company time/resources (i.e., don't send an email to the group), then try to encourage those who you are inviting to keep it low-profile; again, not talking about it while "on the clock"
While it will probably slip, most people know weddings are expensive so if they're not invited it may not be a personal slight, just a finnancial choice.
Don't do this. It's just weird and unnecessary, like inviting everyone to a lunchroom birthday party because you're not inviting them to the real one. And that's a bit insulting.
Is there someone you're close with? Mention over lunch that you picked your wedding date. I'm assuming they know you are engaged already so making small talk won't be weird. And then don't bring it up again but you don't have to avoid it either. If someone asks how planning is you can talk about it (don't go on for 10 minutes about napkins like you would with your MoH).
If you just got engaged and haven't started planning yet then do the same thing. Mention it to the person you're closest with. In a small office news like this travels fast.
Seconded. If your not getting married any time soon just put it out there and enjoy the attention. Also the words "cheap as possible" and "very small" get you a tonne of breathing room.
It also helps if your the groom, cause you have no idea whats going on.
If your the bride I have no idea but not mentioning it probably isn't an option cause it's going to slip out.
I guess the issue was that the ladies she works with all have this weird sense of entitlement and tend to invite themselves along to dinners, parties, that are thrown outside of work. R says that M is not particularly close to anyone except one person that she's known forever (and plans to invite to the nuptials).
Chatting with the girls, it sounds like there's at least one co-worker that M *used* to be good friends with and has fallen out with a bit in the past year. An example V gave me was that M tried to unfriend this lady from FaceBook and she about had a meltdown in the middle of the office...on the verge of tears because "she didn't want to be friends anymore" kind of stuff.
These girls M works with sound craaaazy.
When people ask you how you are doing, say something like "wonderful, I actually got engaged over the weekend". People you work with and aren't close to won't expect an invitation. For the few people that you are close to send the invitation through the mail, do not hand them out personally.
I regularly got wedding advice from people in my office that I wasn't particularly close to, they weren't coming to the wedding and didn't care but they all still had advice on how to find the best photographer/cake person/DJ/ect or they wanted to see pictures of the dress or whatever.
I gave the advice of keeping the arrangements on the hush-hush and being prepared to ask her ushers/big brothers to act as "security" if the office folk start trying to crash her big day, but also to be gracious with the co-workers giving her wedding advice since some of them might actually have a good contact or idea.
Sound solid?
I think so yes. As long as she isn't always talking about her wedding at work and when people ask about it she keeps the convo to a minimum she isn't isn't being rude and she isn't being forced to talk about her wedding with people she'd rather not.
1) She should keep all wedding talk at work to a minimum, and avoid it entirely if she can, other than pointing out the obvious (that she's getting married and that the date will be XYZ and that yes, she's very happy and can't wait for it - all while slowly backing away)
2) If she wants to talk to some co-workers about the wedding, they should ideally be invited, and the conversation should happen outside of work (e.g., lunch break down the street).
3) All invitations should occur outside of the workplace setting, with the understanding that she does not want to talk about it at work because she "doesn't want to make a big deal out of it"
4) If people who are not invited start insinuating themselves or asking what they should wear and stuff like that, she should clearly say, "I'm so sorry, I would love to invite you, but we are trying to keep the ceremony small and cut down on the cost". Keep in mind that some people are just oblivious and make assumptions, so this gives them a chance to just be like, "Oh hey that's cool". The people who would get offended at this point are the kind you shouldn't give two shits about (at which point the backup of having them get kicked out might work, or they just might be bitchy enough for them to use it as an excuse to cause a scene).
In short: be honest, don't rub it in people's faces, invite people outside of work, and if someone tries to sneak in just cut them off from the start.
It's about 35 people, but only half got invitations. Obviously, there's people there who I knew would (A) never be able to show up, and (B) I loathe and do not want showing up. And a few in-between. So I quietly handed out the invites over the period of a couple days. Now, it's on a work day, we don't have weekends off, and probably a quarter of those who got invites will be able to come. I had a plan in place to get invites early to those I really wanted to show up, but in the end, I decided to let them figure it out by who asks for time off first, and everyone is still welcome to come to the late-into-the-night reception. And if anyone asks (so far, no one has ... not even the bitchy one who will openly gripe about everything to everyone) about not getting one, my standby was "I couldn't invite everyone, so I limited it to those who know me and Crystal best".
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