Avoiding response cards

lyndausvi

There is nothing wrong with not having response cards.  If you receive and invitation as the receiver it's up to you to response.  If your friend leaves a voice mail that invites you to dinner on Sunday do you not response in some way?  Call, leave a vm or send and email? Why would a wedding be different?  Sure an RSVP card makes it easier. however, a lack of one does not negate your responsibility to respond to an invite.

In my opinion table-side ordering would be preferred.  However, a lot of venues just do not have the ability to accommodate table-side ordering.  It takes more staff and space to pull it off efficiently.  Cooking for a restaurant and cooking for a banquet are 2 completely different things. 

 Normal restaurant seatings are staggered.   They might have 100 people sitting down at any given time, but those people are all on different parts of their meal. Some are ordering drinks, some are ordering dinner, others are eating apps, others salads, others entrees, others deserts, others after-dinner drinks.    That is how a small kitchen is able to do 100 covers in a night.  Those type of places just don't have the space and man power to cook 75 steaks at the exact same time.  

If you want table side ordering than you should find a place that specialized in that style.  Often places that specialize in banquets are able to do table-side without a problem.  Restaurants often have experience on what can handle or not.  It's smart to listen to them when they say "we can't handle 80 table-side dinners at the same time".  They are not doing it to be mean it could be they just can't produce more space, bigger grills, ovens, whatever to cook that many meals at one time.

masgrande

lovesclimbing said:

We had an afternoon cake and punch reception and guesstimated how many people would be there.  We invited over 200 and I think about 100 showed.  We ordered cake for about 130 based on our guesstimation numbers (guessed 120 would show, ordered for 130). 

How did that kind of reception work out for you? Numbers/formality are still being debated but a bigger cake and punch reception would be ideal. Did you have all the other accoutrements (dress, photo, music, dancing)?

lovesclimbing

masgrande said:

lovesclimbing said:

We had an afternoon cake and punch reception and guesstimated how many people would be there.  We invited over 200 and I think about 100 showed.  We ordered cake for about 130 based on our guesstimation numbers (guessed 120 would show, ordered for 130). 

How did that kind of reception work out for you? Numbers/formality are still being debated but a bigger cake and punch reception would be ideal. Did you have all the other accoutrements (dress, photo, music, dancing)?

We did have photos.  We did a first look, so pretty much all the photos happened before the ceremony.  Then, we left the reception after cutting the cake for about 20 minutes to get a few more couples shots and then returned.  We played a video slideshow of pics of us shortly after we came back in.  Originally, I was going to have an ipod of music playing in the background.  But, it was downstairs and I didn't want to run and get it and everyone was talking so we ended up not.  The reception was probably about 1.5-2 hours long.

No dancing, sadly.  The ceremony and reception were in a church, and they did not allow dancing.  Yes, I had a dress.  I bought a $230ish dress from Simply Bridal.

I think it was a very nice wedding.  Yea, there were some things we both wish we could have had: dancing, an evening wedding, a full meal, a honeymoon somewhere tropical; but we wanted to get married and we couldn't afford it and my parents couldn't (they offered to help with the wedding and payed for about 75% of it.)

In the end, we were married, and it was a nice wedding.  Lots of people have commented, especially to my mom, about how nice it was.