A suggestion specifically for the OP. Since you’re planning this, can you plan a bunch of silly activities to inflict on them throughout the evening? This would give you a role as, say, referee for the three-legged race. Or bring a face-painting kit. Or the toilet paper bridal gown thing. Something, anything, horrible enough that it takes your mind off your pain and ensures you don’t have to plan it next year?
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
So. I think I’ve solved my problem. However, I think it’s worse now. Don’t laugh.
You know how people always post that there’s got to me more to the story? There is. I mentioned there’s one other person in my company who’s not married. He RSVP’d with a date, but then he wandered over the other day and confessed he was just going to bring a random friend, and did I think she’d be bored? So I say that I’ve decided (saving face here) not to bring a date for that very reason. So he says we’ll just keep each other company.
This is such a bad idea. Well, it’s a great idea, but it could turn bad very quickly. Why? We’ve been circling each other for about six months, functioning on an unspoken agreement that workplace dating is a bad idea and hoping that it would just, you know, go away. It hasn’t. It gets worse and harder to ignore every day. I don’t think a dress, dim lighting and a couple of martinis is going to get me anywhere I should be.
Go ahead. Laugh.
I’m not laughing.
I’ve dated people I’ve worked with. On two occasions.
Depending on how closely you interact at work, it can be pure heaven or pure hell.
But just in case you might want to lay off the martinis.
It’s never simple, is it???
You’ll be okay; just don’t belly dance.
Of all the threads lost in the outage, I miss that one most keenly.
I’m going to the company party stag. Again. My co-workers seem to have formed the idea that I date hordes of women who are far too racy to bring to the company party.
Not.
It’s due to nothing I’ve done, besides just being myself. Denying anything just feeds the mill, so I leave it alone.
As regards the recent turn of events, Obsidian, I went there at my first corporate world Xmas party. Seemed like a great idea at the time. As your prescient observation seems to anticipate, it was not
I’d be happy to escort a man or woman 
to their company Xmas party. But I can’t be held responsible for leaving a bad impression.
Three words:
Steal the ham!
Trust me on this…
Stage a mock fight between you and the other guy at the party. Fight about something really miniscule, like one of you had one more shrimp than the other on your plates or something. Get into a huge screaming match, throw a glass of water in his face, and storm out in a huff. You’ll be the talk of the party and no one will want you to show up to the next one.