I met up with a friend for dinner last night who was telling me about a "wedding" she went to last weekend and she now officially wins the award for best guest reaction to a tiered reception ever.
So, firstly, this reception is actually an epic PPD. The actual wedding was last October - and there were two weddings. A small family destination wedding and then a large wedding in their college town. Now, in August of the following year, they invited hundreds of people not to a party, but to something that was clearly called a wedding reception on the invitation. Now, though I know this makes me unpopular around here, I am a person who thinks that a PPD is no big deal in 90% of cases. But even for me three wedding receptions, one of which is almost a year later for 200 people not invited to either of the actual weddings is too much.
Anyway, it was also tiered. So my friend is catching a ride with another friend and here is how she finds about about the tiered nature of the reception. She and her friend are texting about what time to leave for the reception. My friend says, "It starts at 8, so I'll be at your place at 7:30pm." The other friend says, "I'm pretty sure dinner is served at 6pm. We were planning to leave by 5:15 to get there." Then, each of them take pictures of their respective invitations and send them to each other. And of course, one person's invitation says "Garden Dinner Reception at 6pm" and one says "Evening cocktail and hor d'oeuvre reception at 8pm."
Lesson One: Your guests talk.
So my friend is naturally offended. But she's already rsvp'ed and is like, "Well, I like free booze" (because who doesn't) so she figures she'll go anyway. She gets there and the thing is an outdoor tented thing on the parent's farm. Dinner from the first tier of the reception isn't even entirely cleared yet when she gets there. The *only* bathrooms for the event are in the parent's actual house. Because she is there for the free booze, she naturally has to go in to use them at some point. And when she goes in to get to the bathrooms, you have to walk by the pool table which is *covered in all of the extra dinner food that didn't get used.* So there's no way to use the restroom without a)being reminded that you didn't make the first cut and b)having to stare down all the food you weren't invited to eat.
And this is really the last straw. She actually goes ballsy, walks out to the gift table, finds her card with their wedding gift inside in the pile, and takes it back. She called it the "rudeness tax."
Lesson Two: Having a big fake wedding reception with tiered layers just so you can invite the maximum number of people to get the maximum number of gifts just might not work.