How to Word the Invitation?

View quoted message Good luck!

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I want to be the least suspicious as possible! 99% of the people attending are from my side of the family. Then we have some close friends/chosen family that will be attending. They both haven't met each other, so we are trying to say it is an opportunity to meet pre-wedding. Fingers crossed it works!

Hmmm, I would try something like, "our treat" or "we want to treat you all to...". Although I like "on us" it's a bit less formal, maybe less suspicious 😋

View quoted message If I were to get an invitation from a friend to an event and they said "don't worry we're paying" I would instantly think something is up, especially if I knew a bunch of other people would also be there.

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I would consider the place to be reasonably priced, and nothing outside of anybody's price range. Once they get there and realize it is a wedding, they probably will figure out they aren't paying for the meal.

If people think that I don't need to explicitly say it on the evite then I will just leave abstain from putting anything on there!

I don't think you necessarily need to tell people. As long as the restaurant/place you're eating knows that you guys are paying the bill it should be fine. This way no one will be suspicious either. I think you should only say something if the place you are going is maybe fancy so that people don't say no as they can't afford/don't want to pay that much for dinner.

Maybe say something like "We'd love to treat you to a super cool dinner" or something like that. or like Emily said, say "on us" at the end of the invite.

Maybe "on us"? You should call it something that has enough weight that people will feel that it is important enough not to skip. You could literally just call it a surprise dinner and not disclose what the surprise is?