Weekend events included in invitation

teonazia

Help please!

We are having a very intimate destination wedding of only close family members and the wedding is a part of our two week family vacation. To add our guests are all flying in to attend the wedding. 

The reception is very simple and will be a sit-down dinner in a restaurant. I don't want our family members to feel they flew thousands of miles away to only attend a two hour dinner, so I want to somehow incorporate a schedule of family activities such as tours or amusement parks in the wedding invitation. Of course the post-wedding activities are optional, but they are also dutch treat. 

Should I include this in the wedding invitation?

How should I word the schedule of events and pricing?

chibiyui

You're not paying for the optional activities? I don't think having guests pay to tag along with you to amusement parks is going to help any "we flew all this way and all we got was a dinner" feelings.
As long as you are covering dinner, and its a nice dinner, you have to worry about people feeling let down. But any optional activities you invite them to you should pay for.

JoanE2012

Ditto PP, if you're not paying for the optional activities, don't mention them in the invites.  When you're there, you could always casually mention what you guys were planning to do to see if "anyone is interested".

I would see if you could host something else, like maybe breakfast the following morning.  It would be a kind gesture given that everyone has flown in and most everyone would be around the following day to enjoy it.  So if that fits in your budget, I'd definitely do that.

Jen4948

I think most people who accept destination wedding invitations understand that other optional activities are not "hosted," but if you aren't paying for them, I wouldn't bring them up in your invitation because that could inadvertently give the impression that you are paying for them.

misssunshine17

Don't mention anything extra. I'm sorry, I might be a minority here, but your DW better be awesome with great food, bar and music if you're asking people to spend their time off and vacation money to a place you chose. 

Fran1985

misssunshine17 said:

Don't mention anything extra. I'm sorry, I might be a minority here, but your DW better be awesome with great food, bar and music if you're asking people to spend their time off and vacation money to a place you chose. 

  Normally I agree- but it sounds like the people that are invited are already going on the family vacation. So this is just during the normally scheduled vacation. As far as the activities, if you are not paying for them you are not actually inviting them, so leave those off the invitation, but feel free to start an email chain saying that you and DH are planning to do X,Y, and Z on the following dates if people want to join,

indianaalum

1) If you are having all your guest fly to another location, I personally think you need to host more than just a normal average dinner. You need to host a "WEDDING"

2) If you are not "paying", do not include activities that they have to pay on their own in the invitation.

3) make "hotel" bags and feel free to put in list of activities to do in that bag

SP29

If you are not going to pay for these activities, do not list them anywhere on the invite.

If you are going to pay for any of these activities I would list them on a separate insert included with the invite, but not the invitation itself.

Otherwise, word of mouth to let your family know of some outings you'd like to take, but keep it separate from the wedding.

Breakfast or lunch the next day would be nice. 

rvg22

I disagree with some of the above posters. I absolutely do not think you need to do more than a dinner for your wedding reception just because people are flying in. Some couples just aren't into dancing, cake cutting, garter-tossing, speeches, and any of the other stuff that happens at a typical "reception." Why should they have to do those things at their wedding just because people traveled more than some arbitrary number of hours? Many of those wedding-y things make me shudder and there was no way we were doing them just because most (80%) of our guests were OOT. 

That said, it would be nice of you to host another event (either a "welcome" dinner the night before (can be the same as the rehearsal dinner, just invite everyone if you can swing it) or a brunch the morning after the wedding to give people more of a chance to mingle and visit, and for you to express your appreciation that your guests traveled so far to see you.

Fran1985

rvg22 said:

I disagree with some of the above posters. I absolutely do not think you need to do more than a dinner for your wedding reception just because people are flying in. Some couples just aren't into dancing, cake cutting, garter-tossing, speeches, and any of the other stuff that happens at a typical "reception." Why should they have to do those things at their wedding just because people traveled more than some arbitrary number of hours? Many of those wedding-y things make me shudder and there was no way we were doing them just because most (80%) of our guests were OOT. 

That said, it would be nice of you to host another event (either a "welcome" dinner the night before (can be the same as the rehearsal dinner, just invite everyone if you can swing it) or a brunch the morning after the wedding to give people more of a chance to mingle and visit, and for you to express your appreciation that your guests traveled so far to see you.

Just to clarify, to me a destination wedding is when you make everyone travel to a vacation spot. So its not just that you have a lot of out of town guest. For instance if me and DH live in City A and we have the wedding there live there, not a destination wedding. A DW is when you pick a totally different location to make everyone travel to. So yeah if someone was like come to my wedding in Cabo! And I spent a few grand to go, and then reception was just a dinner, I would definitely feel a little disappointed.

rvg22

Fran1985 said: rvg22 said: I disagree with some of the above posters. I absolutely do not think you need to do more than a dinner for your wedding reception just because people are flying in. Some couples just aren't into dancing, cake cutting, garter-tossing, speeches, and any of the other stuff that happens at a typical "reception." Why should they have to do those things at their wedding just because people traveled more than some arbitrary number of hours? Many of those wedding-y things make me shudder and there was no way we were doing them just because most (80%) of our guests were OOT. 
That said, it would be nice of you to host another event (either a "welcome" dinner the night before (can be the same as the rehearsal dinner, just invite everyone if you can swing it) or a brunch the morning after the wedding to give people more of a chance to mingle and visit, and for you to express your appreciation that your guests traveled so far to see you. Just to clarify, to me a destination wedding is when you make everyone travel to a vacation spot. So its not just that you have a lot of out of town guest. For instance if me and DH live in City A and we have the wedding there live there, not a destination wedding. A DW is when you pick a totally different location to make everyone travel to. So yeah if someone was like come to my wedding in Cabo! And I spent a few grand to go, and then reception was just a dinner, I would definitely feel a little disappointed.
_________________________________________
Fran1985 . I don't think that high % of OOT guests = a DW either, but it seems to me that the guests' experience is similar in both situations....either way most/all guests need to pay to travel (hotel, car, flight, meals) and most likely use some vacation time (most of our guests took 1 to 3 days off of work), so why are there more expectations in the case of a DW?  

Is the difference the amount of money that guests have to spend to go to Cabo vs. (in my case) Denver? Or the length of the flight....? The fact that it was an intentionally more expensive wedding destination than it needed to be?  (I'm just curious, not trying to argue!)

indianaalum

Fran1985 said:

rvg22 said:

I disagree with some of the above posters. I absolutely do not think you need to do more than a dinner for your wedding reception just because people are flying in. Some couples just aren't into dancing, cake cutting, garter-tossing, speeches, and any of the other stuff that happens at a typical "reception." Why should they have to do those things at their wedding just because people traveled more than some arbitrary number of hours? Many of those wedding-y things make me shudder and there was no way we were doing them just because most (80%) of our guests were OOT. 

That said, it would be nice of you to host another event (either a "welcome" dinner the night before (can be the same as the rehearsal dinner, just invite everyone if you can swing it) or a brunch the morning after the wedding to give people more of a chance to mingle and visit, and for you to express your appreciation that your guests traveled so far to see you.

Just to clarify, to me a destination wedding is when you make everyone travel to a vacation spot. So its not just that you have a lot of out of town guest. For instance if me and DH live in City A and we have the wedding there live there, not a destination wedding. A DW is when you pick a totally different location to make everyone travel to. So yeah if someone was like come to my wedding in Cabo! And I spent a few grand to go, and then reception was just a dinner, I would definitely feel a little disappointed.

I agree. If someone feels the ned to make me travel and spend 1000's of dollars so they can get married in a pretty place, they better be hosting me more than a 2 hour dinner.

cidefi

Im making a welcome folder that I will leave in each of my OOT guest hotel rooms. It will include a list of restaurants, some coupons, a list of activities they can do, and how much they cost, and a map from the hotel to the destination. Everything will be within walking distance of the hotel.

AussieCat42

indianaalum said:

Fran1985 said:

rvg22 said:

I disagree with some of the above posters. I absolutely do not think you need to do more than a dinner for your wedding reception just because people are flying in. Some couples just aren't into dancing, cake cutting, garter-tossing, speeches, and any of the other stuff that happens at a typical "reception." Why should they have to do those things at their wedding just because people traveled more than some arbitrary number of hours? Many of those wedding-y things make me shudder and there was no way we were doing them just because most (80%) of our guests were OOT. 

That said, it would be nice of you to host another event (either a "welcome" dinner the night before (can be the same as the rehearsal dinner, just invite everyone if you can swing it) or a brunch the morning after the wedding to give people more of a chance to mingle and visit, and for you to express your appreciation that your guests traveled so far to see you.

Just to clarify, to me a destination wedding is when you make everyone travel to a vacation spot. So its not just that you have a lot of out of town guest. For instance if me and DH live in City A and we have the wedding there live there, not a destination wedding. A DW is when you pick a totally different location to make everyone travel to. So yeah if someone was like come to my wedding in Cabo! And I spent a few grand to go, and then reception was just a dinner, I would definitely feel a little disappointed.

I agree. If someone feels the ned to make me travel and spend 1000's of dollars so they can get married in a pretty place, they better be hosting me more than a 2 hour dinner.

No one is MAKING you come to anything. If you know ahead of time that the wedding is destination wedding followed by a 2 hour dinner, and you choose to come anyway; you really have no right to be upset. If you decide that attending this wedding is not worth your time/money, that's fine- but declaring that the bride and groom 'had better' throw a party that's up to your standards is incredibly rude on your part. Especially in a case like this, where it's not so much 'please come on vacation here', it's 'please take an evening out of this vacation you're already on to celebrate our wedding'.

AllyIdo

This.

No one is MAKING you come to anything. If you know ahead of time that the wedding is destination wedding followed by a 2 hour dinner, and you choose to come anyway; you really have no right to be upset. If you decide that attending this wedding is not worth your time/money, that's fine- but declaring that the bride and groom 'had better' throw a party that's up to your standards is incredibly rude on your part. Especially in a case like this, where it's not so much 'please come on vacation here', it's 'please take an evening out of this vacation you're already on to celebrate our wedding'.