I know that only inviting people to the ceremony can be seen as rude, I am not sure if this is an exception. My fiance and I are having a 5:00 wedding and evening reception. My fiance and I are both really involved with the youth group at our church. I have been working with a group of girls who are now 11th graders sence they were going into 7th grade and my fiance has been working with a group of 10th grade boys for almost as long. We are inviting some children to our reception but their parents will also be there and most of them are 10 or younger. Our reception is about 15 minutes away and their will be alcohol and our college friends, I do not really want to mix the high school crowd with the reception bunch. However we have grown really close with these kids and we would like to share our special day with them in some capacity.
We were thinking about inviting the whole youth group to the ceremony and holding a short cake and punch reception in the fellowship hall before leaving for our reception. (We are planning to take pictures before the wedding so we would have the time that we would use to take picture to be at the church reception). We thought that this would also be a nice option because our reception is at night and many elderly people will not want to drive to the reception, so it would give them another option. Also it is pretty common at my church to announce a wedding ceremony in the bulletin so technically anyone from the church could attend.
What do you guys think about this.