I've been having a battle with myself determining the best method for having an open ceremony and close reception. My fiance and I know anticipate 300500 people at our wedding and we cannot accommodate for everyone at the reception. Today when I searched for ideas on how to send out invitations I was very disappointed to discover that this is frowned upon. I've been to weddings with closed receptions and to me everyone understood especially when it's a financial issue. My fiance and I will be recent graduates of college and we will be paying for everything by ourselves pretty much, so we just can't afford to have everyone there. But because we are high school sweethearts, with college friends, and families that are prominent in our community a lot of people are anticipating this day for us and I do not want a closed ceremony. My personal feelings on the matter is it's my wedding I have to make decisions based on what we want, outside of traditions or "Norms" no one is helping us pay for our wedding but us and people that are really happy for us will be there whether invited to the reception or not. The idea I came up with was to only send invitations to those invited to both reception and ceremony but to send post card save the dates with ceremony only information to those only invited to the ceremony. I just need feedback, thoughts, and ideas!