Opinions please

This is really mostly for my friends: you know we've managed to get a date set (July 26th) for the wedding, and are in the middle of planning. My biggest frustration is the usual one - I want to have way more people than I can afford.

Basically, D's family has about a gagillion people, so the family guest list for his side alone is at a hundred and counting. I've also got a bunch of relatives that I'm obliged to invite, though that number will be closer to 50 or so. Because we're not twenty-somethings, we've got to pay for this shindig ourselves, and we can't afford to go into hock like they do on all those tv shows. So at ten to twenty bucks a head, if I'm very frugal with the menu, that means at best we can afford two hundred people or so. If I were wise, I'd probably go closer to 150, but I'm going to stretch it to 200 regardless. Anyway - if you do the math: that leaves comparatively little room for all the theater people I actually want to invite.

Last night I was at a Dreamwell board meeting, and was asked about the planning and the date. I gave them the status rundown and mentioned that I was going to invite as many people as I could, given the money dilemma. Matt suggested that I not worry so much about the dinners - invite who I can to do the full buffet thing, but send out a second group of invites to the rest for the drinking afterward. Everyone else concurred, saying that none of my friends would mind, and besides, theater's all about the drinking after the show.

Of course, this breaks like 100 iron-clad rules of etiquette that you see on all the wedding sites. I know I've seen "Dear Abby"-type letters complaining about the gall of the bride relegating some of her guests to second-class status. So it had never occurred to me as a real, viable option. Then again, I am breaking many rules anyway: I don't have "colors," I'm making my own cake/invites/decorations/flowers, I'm having an "open mike" reception where we can all sing away to our hearts content, and I really don't care what my wedding party wears so long as they like how they look and are roughly in the same color (which I had them choose by vote - black won out as being the easiest because you don't have to worry about shades and matching).

So what do you think - would anyone be offended if I invite as many people as I can pay for to the whole thing, but also invite a slew of people to the drinking part only? Would anyone actually prefer to have a drinks-only invite for logistics purposes or for any other reason? My thoughts: I'm very excited about the idea of actually being able to invite everybody I'd love to party with, but I really wouldn't want anyone to feel hurt or slighted because they didn't get the whole package. Please, please, if you're in the group of people I've acted with over the years, leave a comment and let me know your feelings.