No reception?

knottie61c3926c4cab0104

My fiance and I are wanting to have a ceremony at a local park then someone's house afterwards. We were planning immediate family only, but that turned into 40+ people and it won't work so well. Then we figured we could do just a ceremony and no official reception. What is the ettiquette on that? A ceremony at, say, 2pm followed by maybe a table of cupcakes or snacks or whatever and calling it done while we go take pictures and whatever.

We don't care about the big official party, but we're planning to go to a local bar with an open invite to everyone late that same evening. On Sundays (the day we are planning due to work and custody schedules) the bar is just our group of friends anyway.  

Would it be wrong/whatever to do the ceremony and bar only, especially so far apart time wise? How would we word this on the invites? 

ILoveBeachMusic

Everyone invited to your ceremony should be hosted in some way at a reception. Cake or cupcakes and drinks are perfectly fine depending on the time of day. However, you need to be there to thank your guests for attending the ceremony. A reception doesn't have to be a big party with dinner, dancing and drinking. Since your ceremony is at 2:00, the reception wouldn't fall during a meal time. A cake and punch reception is just fine. You can take pictures afterwards (or before the ceremony).

 I am assuming you are not hosting at the bar so anyone can be told by word of mouth to go there. It would not replace a reception of some type immediately following the ceremony though.

Jen4948

You need to greet your guests and provide them with appropriate hospitality immediately after the ceremony. 

That said, cupcakes and/or appetizers and punch would be fine for a 2pm reception. 

I would get as many photos as possible before the ceremony with your respective family members and friends and only do those that require both of you in the immediate period after the ceremony. But minimize the amount of time your guests have to wait for you (no more than an hour) and have the refreshments served while the photos are being taken. Only after that and after you've thanked your guests for coming can you "call it a day."

It is okay to do the bar later as long as your guests are told unambiguously that it is not hosted and that paying for drinks there will be their responsibility. 

banana468

Jen4948 said:

You need to greet your guests and provide them with appropriate hospitality immediately after the ceremony. 

That said, cupcakes and/or appetizers and punch would be fine for a 2pm reception. 

I would get as many photos as possible before the ceremony with your respective family members and friends and only do those that require both of you in the immediate period after the ceremony. But minimize the amount of time your guests have to wait for you (no more than an hour) and have the refreshments served while the photos are being taken. Only after that and after you've thanked your guests for coming can you "call it a day."

It is okay to do the bar later as long as your guests are told unambiguously that it is not hosted and that paying for drinks there will be their responsibility. 

All of this.   If you want a table of cupcakes set up after the ceremony you need to be there to host the guests and that's the reception.  If you do this at a non-mealtime then that's perfect.

The non-host bar time is great as long as it's done via word of mouth like, "We're going to be at "The Drunken Clam" at 6.   If you're interested in continuing to hang out they offer X and will take all major credit cards." 

MyNameIsNot

knottie61c3926c4cab0104 said:

My fiance and I are wanting to have a ceremony at a local park then someone's house afterwards. We were planning immediate family only, but that turned into 40+ people and it won't work so well. Then we figured we could do just a ceremony and no official reception. What is the ettiquette on that? A ceremony at, say, 2pm followed by maybe a table of cupcakes or snacks or whatever and calling it done while we go take pictures and whatever.

We don't care about the big official party, but we're planning to go to a local bar with an open invite to everyone late that same evening. On Sundays (the day we are planning due to work and custody schedules) the bar is just our group of friends anyway.  

Would it be wrong/whatever to do the ceremony and bar only, especially so far apart time wise? How would we word this on the invites? 

If you want immediate family, do immediate family only. Don't let someone force you to invite people you don't want.

What you're describing is known as a cake and punch reception. It's common in small towns, and while it doesn't have to be limited to specifically cake or punch, it's typically informal and short. You do need to greet everyone who came and thank them for coming, but a reception doesn't have to be a 5 hour party. Most of the time cake and punch would be an hour or so. 

With such a short reception, I'd say either do your photos before the ceremony or wait until after the reception. It doesn't really make sense to have people attend a ceremony, then wait for an hour while you do pictures, and then socialize for an hour. 

I'm assuming you're not intending to host the bar portion of the night and that you'll "invite" people who aren't invited to the ceremony. That's fine as an after party, but you shouldn't send a formal invitation for an non-hosted event. Just spread by word of mouth that you'll be at X location starting at Y time and you hope they can stop by. 

knottie61c3926c4cab0104

We were definitely not going to put the bar on the formal invites, for sure. Thank you everyone for the input, I'm loving the ideas and just calling it a cake and punch reception so no one gets their hopes up for some big bash. Our immediate family is already 48 people, we figured some of our closest friends would get us to 80 or so, so not a vast difference, but still big for price if we attempted to feed everyone a meal! Most of my family has done hosted bars, so I'm trying to get away from that being expected as much as possible at the reception.