We know there have been plenty ‘o’ posts about invitation etiquette but our situation is just a little different! Simple = complicated? After more than a year engaged and trying to figure out how and where and who to have present (so many opinions), we’ve settled! We are planning a small, immediate family ceremony (grandparents, parents and lots of siblings=25 people) on a Friday evening in a botanic garden where we live. Dinner there after the ceremony with the fam. Saturday, we’ll invite all of our friends to a nice, but relatively casual reception in the backyard of our new home. Sunday, we will get everyone together for a breakfast picnic and football in our local park (if they want). We went this route because A.) money--we are doing the wedding ourselves and B.)we are simple people who want to be more excited than nervous about details on the day we get hitched!
Our question is, when should we send the next day celebration invite to out-of-towners and how should we communicate some key things? And is it weird to invite them to a party the day after the wedding? We want to communicate that we would love to celebrate with them but given we decided on a tiny family ceremony, we understand that many people may not fly all the way to our city for just a casual-ish celebration the next day. That said, we want to give enough advance notice to those who really want to come for the party. We know that 6-8 weeks is the norm for traditional but the same for this?? We also plan to say no gifts please, in recognition that flying in for a lovely party (in lieu of the whole wedding) is plenty a gift for us! Are there any other taboos we are committing in this attempt to be simple?