Should I invite friends to our wedding I'm not that close to?

You'd be surprised at how big 50-100 people can seem. Besides, the people with whom you are close will want to hang with you on your day. I've been the person from out of town, who got invited, and spent the money to travel and be at the wedding, and got to see my friend for maybe 5 minutes tops. Instead of inviting people to the wedding, why not have a little party when you and your husband get back from your Honeymoon? You can still mix and mingle with folks, without it being official wedding stuff, and without people feeling like they have to bring a gift. You can have a barbecue, or drinks, something low key. You can have wedding and honeymoon pictures to share with your guests.

I don't care what mistaken people tell you; an invitation to a wedding does not create an obligation to send a gift. It simply does not. The question isn't whether the potential invitees are obligated to send a gift. The question, stated quite clearly, is whether the potential invitees would feel obligated to send a gift. And in the U.S., in general, the answer is yes, they would. (Whether it is wrong for them to feel that way is another matter, but not under the OP's control.) Here is what I think, based on my own experience having received wedding invitations of both types. Old friends who you're out of touch with: definitely. They will be touched you thought of them and happy to hear the good news, whether or not they can make it. If they do come, they'll make a great toast and serve as a visible reminder of the life story that's led you to this happy day. People in the office who you like but aren't close to: I would say no. Some people like to go to acquaintances' weddings, some people don't, and you don't know which kind of people these co-workers are. But whichever kind they are, they'll kind of feel obligated to go. And your own wedding is not a venue in which you're going to get to know them better, I promise you. They might get to know your cousin who sat at their table, but what good does that do you? As for the gifts: yes, I do think people will feel obligated, but unless they are more cynical than most people I don't think they'll be offended or think you're just inviting them to hit them up for a present.

What's the problem with having 50 people at your wedding? It sounds perfect! Invite whoever you want, and don't stress about numbers. Some people have small families and few close friends, and that is perfectly ok (it's probably better that way!)

I think it's nice to include and invite whoever you want. If anyone wants to be offended at being invited to attend a wedding, they can do so; nothing you can do to control that. I would suggest not inviting people "casually" at the last minute; how are they supposed to plan to attend without fair warning?

do people usually feel obligated to send gifts to weddings they don't go to? No one who would invite me to their wedding would be so gauche as to expect a present from me. But I would never be so gauche as to not send a gift to someone who invited me to their wedding. If you want to invite people who you think are unlikely to attend but are likely to desire to send you present, a handwritten, personalized note slipped into the invite, saying you miss them, hoping to see them, and telling them not to send a gift, or to feel obligated to do so, would be a gracious touch, I think. Even then, the recipient still might want to send you a present. Because giving presents makes people happy.

Strictly ettiquette-wise, there is never an obligation to give a gift. Otherwise, it's not a gift - it's an in-kind transaction. But again, this is cultural.

Only invite people if you want them to come. Don't overthink it beyond that!

Mr. Adams and I got married at a fairly private ceremony at our favorite bar by an officiant we found in the Yellow Pages. We did have a small reception afterward in the banquet room at a nearby restaurant. In our preliminary discussions on the matter, we'd planned on about 30 to 35 people attending, counting family members and close friends who lived nearby. Oddly enough and completely out of the blue, once we'd sent out invitations to those who we thought might attend, we were actually inundated with phone calls from extremely casual friends (both present and past) and obscure relatives we hadn't heard from in years expressing disappointment that they hadn't been invited. Likewise co-workers mentioned to me "your wedding must be soon, maybe my invitation got lost in the mail...?" How some of these people even found out about our wedding we don't know, but we ended up printing more invitations (our reception was [originally] so small and DIY that Mr. Adams had designed and printed the invitations individually on our home computer/printer) and sent them to a second set of friends/co-workers/relatives. We ended up with just under 80 attendees, much to our astonishment. We were like you, thinking that, unless you're a very close friend or relative, a wedding invitation is merely a gift solicitation because nobody really likes going to one of those boring types of events unless they're obligated to. Who knew?! So my ultimate take on the situation is to just go ahead and invite whomever you want to invite. Like I said, to my mind I thought of such an invitation as a "send us money!" solicitation, but apparently there are a lot of people who are hurt when they're left out of the festivities.

We had just under 50 people at our wedding and it was the perfect number of people, IMHO--it was just all the people who were special to us, who we could cut loose and be ourselves around. I think it made the difference between it being what it was (a swanky but relaxed party where the band had so much fun that they played past their scheduled quit time) and being something more formal and stiff than what we were looking for. As an added bonus, we got to hug/thank/talk to most everyone there, which definitely would have not been possible with a larger party. I think it's worth asking yourselves whether you really want a big wedding before you awkwardly pad out the list with people you aren't close to just to make it a bigger party. If this is just to hit a venue quota...is the venue more important than spending your special day surrounded by loved ones with no unnecessary social anxiety/weirdness?