Seated Dinner vs. Cocktail Hour?

alizabee84

We are looking at a venue that has two options - A seated dinner for 150 guests, or a strolling option that can fitup to 400. We basically start to bend our budget when considering over 150 people to cater for, and we want people to be comfortable, but the downside is that we are really, really shaving the guest list in some ways, so being able to accomodate 200 or so would be less stress in one way (but not in others necessarily). There is a third possibility that if we can expand our budget we may be able to rent more space, but it may be in another room, and both my fiance and I think that's a bit weird, having people sit in two different areas. Thoughts? We are lookng at a non-traditional venue, and it is really way more "us" so to speak, so we really want it, but there are these limitations. I'm new to all of this planning stuff, so any ideas or thoughts would be welcome. Thanks.

aurianna

If the cocktail reception doesn't have a chair for every butt, scrap it now.
If there would be seating for everyone, then you could do the cocktail one, but unless there are tons and tons of apps that would fill everyone up, you'd want to not have your wedding during a meal time. (so pretty much your wedding would need to be between 2 and 4 or after 9pm)

MuppetOverlord

My preference as a bride would be to have the people I'm closest to and who are most meaningful to me be part of the wedding and have a dinner.

My preference as a guest, would to feel like I'm a meaningful guest and to eat dinner. I've been to a few weddings with a few hundred people (one was about 350 people, another was 200) and didn't even get to say hi to the bride and groom. For the 350 people one - it was mostly the father's clients and I just felt lost and like I went to a conerence.

We're obviously on different wavelengths regarding our guest counts but It's really all about what you want. Will you be comfortable with that many people? If you want to do just apps...be mindful of your ceremony timing so that people have a chance to eat before or after.

alizabee84

Thank you for the responses, I agree with the seat for every butt, Aurianna - specially knowing our crowd. And BritniLeigh, that is something I can't believe I didn't think about - we want to be able to see everyone there, so in our case, maybe the 150 seated dinner is best. I also would worry about making sure everyone had enough food with the cocktail hour. Getting that guest list down is, well, difficult. Worth it though, for the atmospehere that we want I think. Thanks again!

QueerFemme

I would choose the option you like best that puts everyone in the same room. I wouldn't want to be a guest that was banished to an overflow room.

sdose13

I went to a wedding last summer where we had to sit in an overflow room. There was no seating chart, but we got there juuuust late enough that we had to sit in the basement of this place. We missed all the toasts and had to go upstairs to get to the bar and walk through the "main" room in front of everyone and it was super crowded. Had I known we'd end up where we did, we would not have made the trip to the reception. Just something to consider.