Sometimes hosted by the retiree’s family and sometimes an official company event, the retirement party is an event where you want to mix the guest of honor’s family and friends with their work colleagues. If possible, it is nice to invite associates from past positions as well as people the retiree interacted with professionally outside their own company – vendors, salespeople, etc…
And, perhaps most importantly, invite the people the retiree will be spending time with in the future. It can be fun to mix these different groups. Nowadays party invitations are often sent via email using services like evite or punchbowl, but a fun variety of paper retirement invitations are also available.