Does one invite adviser / cohort / lab to one's wedding? For a PhD student getting married in the middle of the degree, is there an established etiquette for invited your peers and/or your adviser to the wedding?

Obviously, circumstances of the wedding affect the answer. But for the sake of argument, assume we're talking about a medium-sized affair in the US that includes extended family and friends (i.e. it's not a small, intimate affair).

For a specific example, I'm talking about a small lab of 8-10 people plus the adviser, most of whom have at least 2-3 years of working together.

The issues I think need to be considered are:


Does an invitation cross any boundaries?
Similarly, does the lack of an invitation imply some offense?
And lastly, is it all-or-nothing binary? That is, do you invite everyone or no one?
Just invite the people you would like to have come.  If there are other students, post-docs, faculty, or staff that you are close enough to that you would want to have them at your wedding, then just invite them.  There is no established protocol for who you should invite, and no one is likely to be offended if you invite some of your lab-mates but not all of them.

This is, fundamentally, a workplace issue, rather than an academia issue, although the laboratory workplace for a graduate student poses some unique challenges.  Whether to invite your advisor is just a particular example of whether to invite your boss to the wedding.

I got married halfway through my Ph.D., and I invited a few other graduate students.  I did not invite my advisor, and I know that he was not offended.  When I got back from my honeymoon, he even gave me a small wedding present.