Ceremony Invitation

But-Barnes

Hello All,

I have a question. My fiance and I are big into our churches, and we would like to invite several people to the service, but cannot afford to have them all at the reception. Someone recommended that we hold a ceremony that is open to everyone and simply announce in church that we would love to share our wedding ceremony with them, but that reception will be family and close friends only. What do you think? I think it sounds okay, but I thought I would ask your opinion on this one to get another point of view. 

Thanks!

-Amber

opalsky007

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_ceremony-invitation?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:9Discussion:11c91878-4fb2-440d-aa5a-27833c4b3182Post:b08fdd11-ebe3-4dd0-87c6-85dfe3df4338">Ceremony Invitation</a>:
[QUOTE]Hello All, I have a question. My fiance and I are big into our churches, and we would like to invite several people to the service, but cannot afford to have them all at the reception. Someone recommended that we hold a ceremony that is open to everyone and simply announce in church that we would love to share our wedding ceremony with them, but that reception will be family and close friends only. What do you think? I think it sounds okay, but I thought I would ask your opinion on this one to get another point of view.  Thanks! -Amber
Posted by But-Barnes[/QUOTE]

No. The reception is to thank your guests for coming to the ceremony. You can't thank some and not others.

[Deleted User]

Well, isn't the ceremony going to be at one of your churches? Many churches put upcoming wedding announcements in the weekly bulletins.

While you cannot stop people from attending your wedding esp if it is in a church, the people that you send invites to should also be invited to your reception. If you are just having the ceremony and a small reception, then you send a wedding announcement after the wedding to those who were not invited to the wedding and reception.

Beachy730

As Missysue said, our church put our wedding in the church bulletin the week before the wedding, so everyone at the church was fully aware of the date and time.  We had several people that we weren't able to invite, but they decided to come to the ceremony on their own.  Some were my mom's friends, some were friends from work or other areas that we chose not to invite.  But they either asked us, our parents, or other guests the date and time of the ceremony. 

Wether you invite them by paper invite, word of mouth, church announcement, etc., anyone who is invited needs to be invited to the entire wedding. 

marisah83

You can't invite someone to the ceremony and not to the reception.  Not sure what you are planning for the reception, but you might need to scale it back so that you can accomodate everyone you plan to invite.