Invited Conundrum

I have written before about what to do about inviting people from our current city, since we have a lot of friends in the synagogue and I would want to invite my whole graduate program class.

We've decided to invite our closest friends from shul to the wedding and then have a separate party for the people in my class when we get back. The reason is, there are a lot fewer people from shul we want to invite, and we simply can't invite another 27 people. Additionally, if we only invited a few people from the program (because there are a few people I would really like to be there), there is a good chance they can't afford to come anyway, so all I would accomplish by inviting them would be to point out who are my closer friends in the program. We're all getting along really well right now and I don't want to start any drama, like why did she invite her and not me, and I don't even know if that will happen but I don't want it to happen.

So that is the solution. I'm not 100% happy with that, but there is no way to invite everyone from the program. I feel bad inviting them to pre-wedding things, like my dress-trying-on party, but not inviting them to the wedding. I wish they could come. But we are really overbooked, and I don't want to put pressure on people who are already spending tons of money on school (and who likely don't have jobs, very few of us are working at all and those who are do so in order to pay back loans immediately that are gaining interest) to spend $200-300 on a plane ticket and $100+ on the hotel room per night.

Well, we weren't invited to our friends' wedding here when we first moved here because we'd only been friends a few months and they didn't have any more space. We weren't offended! We understood guest list limits and whatnot. I hope everyone understands for us!