evening reception - how many from work?

Yes exactly the same as you - I was hoping my venue would be big enough to just put up an open evening invite to everyone and then it would sort itself out with some people not being able to make it as it is in August (I'm a Teacher) & others may not want to travel so far etc....

BUT we only really have room for 20 extra in the evening which is nothing so I have had to be really selective and just invite my 'best friends' + partners to the whole day (6 people in total) I have told them who else is invited & that no one else is - Also spent since then explaining whenever the topic comes up that I really have no room but would have loved to invite everyone.

People are organising a separate works hen do which the men are also invited to (there aren't many men anyway) so I hope this will help everyone to celebrate with me. But I know exactly how u feel.

When i had this predicament I thought that if I couldnt invite everyone (which would be ideal) i would invite as few as possible. Bear with me - i do have some logic. If i were a person at work, i wouldn't mind not being invited if only 10 people who were most close were invited, but if 30 had been invited and i was not one of them i might feel a bit more peeved. An arbitrary cut off for me, would be if you can't invite them all, then invite no more than a third, then the people who aren't coming are in the majority. hope that makes sense. just my opinion!