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Wedding Reception Forum

Receiving Line

My FI and I are currently working on our day-of itinerary with our coordinator. I would rather do a receiving line over table visits (I want to eat my dinner and let everyone else eat theirs), but our coordinator thinks this will take an hour. The line would be my FI and I and our parents (4 total), no wedding party. 

Our max guest list would be 157, assuming that all of our outstanding RSVPs reply yes. 

For those of you who did a receiving line, how many guests did you have going through and approximately how long did it take?

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Re: Receiving Line

  • We had 75 total, and the line took about 10-15 minutes because there was A LOT of mingling and lot of people seeing each other for the first time in ages while they were in line. I recently attended a wedding with around 125 guests, and their line took less than a half hour.
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  • Thanks for the feedback. I thought it sounded sort of crazy that it would take an hour! Then again, she initially told us that receiving lines and table visits are old news, and anyone who wanted to talk to us would just come talk to us during dinner. Um, no. Rude. So it's possible she's still trying to dissuade me from doing this.

    In any case, I think we have a plan worked out and we're going to allot just over half an hour for the receiving line. There will be plenty of time to mingle during cocktail hour and after dinner, so we can hopefully keep things moving along in the line.

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  • We did one in about 30 minutes with 150 guests (that said, plenty of those were families, children, etc. so it's not like we were chatting with every single person). I think the key to doing one in a reasonable time frame is to first keep it to just yourselves. I've seen lines where the entire wedding party is there to greet the guests which is weird and excessive. My H and I were hosting, so we were the only ones doing the greeting/thank you. Secondly, if you can set yourselves up in a way that people really can't linger, that helps. Outside our church, there is a large open area with wide steps leading to the parking lot. We positioned ourselves at the top of the steps so that people really had to keep moving.
  • We had about 120 people and it took about 30 minutes. 
  • We had about 152 people at our wedding. It took -15 minutes - maybe even quicker. No one really stopped to chat - they were in a line and knew others were behind them. We just hugged, greated and said thank you really quickly to everyone.

    We just had us and our parents in line.
  • This is great, thanks ladies!

    There will be 6 of us total in the receiving line. We can't do the receiving line right after the ceremony, so our plan is that we will be lined up as people are moving from cocktail hour to their tables for dinner. I'm hoping that this way people will 1) have socialized with our parents during cocktail hour and won't be so chatty, 2) recognize that there's a line and they need to keep moving, and 3) know that they're supposed to be going to sit down for dinner and not hold the line up!

    Thanks for all the input about how long yours all took; I've only ever been a guest moving through the receiving line!

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  • Chatting in a receiving line is very rude.  You greet the person by name, shake their hand and say, "Mrs. Jones, I'm so pleased you could come today.  I will see you at the reception."  Then you turn to the next person in line.
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