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Wedding Vows & Ceremony Discussions
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Large Ceremony, Small Reception
I know this has been talked about in other discussions but they mostly seem to be church related which isn't what we are planning.
We are getting married on an island where the charter ferry holds a maximum of 100 people. The cafe on the island caters for a comfortable 50, 100 with a marquee. The island is open to the public with the last ferry returning to the mainland at 5:30pm. Our direct families add up to around 70 people + the wedding party we will total around 85-90 guests.
Our plan is to have a ceremony which anyone can attend, family, friends, co-workers etc with the idea that they will spend the day on the island with their family and friends on the beach/ island. We will have finger food and drinks provided from midday until the public ferry leaves. The ceremony will be around 3-4pm with the cake and catching up afterwards.
Once the public ferry has left, our family will gather for a seated meal and a more intimate getting to know the family time before heading home on the charter ferry.
I understand some people see this as a tiered system but I dont know how we can include everyone.
Any advice or experiences will be helpful.
We are getting married on an island where the charter ferry holds a maximum of 100 people. The cafe on the island caters for a comfortable 50, 100 with a marquee. The island is open to the public with the last ferry returning to the mainland at 5:30pm. Our direct families add up to around 70 people + the wedding party we will total around 85-90 guests.
Our plan is to have a ceremony which anyone can attend, family, friends, co-workers etc with the idea that they will spend the day on the island with their family and friends on the beach/ island. We will have finger food and drinks provided from midday until the public ferry leaves. The ceremony will be around 3-4pm with the cake and catching up afterwards.
Once the public ferry has left, our family will gather for a seated meal and a more intimate getting to know the family time before heading home on the charter ferry.
I understand some people see this as a tiered system but I dont know how we can include everyone.
Any advice or experiences will be helpful.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Large Ceremony, Small Reception
Alternatively, have your wedding on the island, and then have a cake and punch reception outside there. The "cake and catching up" is your reception, but make sure you host it properly. Have the seated meal the day before with your family and WP as a rehearsal dinner, or at a later date as an event unrelated to the wedding.
Particularly, it would be terrible if a co-worker was the one in that situation, because now the whole office is going to hear about it, and that's going to affect your job.
That said, you're not changing the overall area of your reception which makes it very clear that there are two tiers of guests. If you had a ceremony with a cake and punch reception in the church hall from 2-4 with a later dinner from 6-10, I could *almost* get on board. But this is a recipe for disaster.
How would you possibly execute this well? Would you ask your coworkers to make the plans to see part of your event? Would you tell them that you don't plan to host them as well as the rest of your guests? I can see that working out well come review time.
Ditto for the friends. Does the group from Wednesday trivia night make the cut for dinner while the old college friends that you haven't seen in years get to go on the first ferry? What about the high school friend who drove you to DQ after your first breakup? Is she your MOH but your mutual friends from choir are in the group of the first list only? Would you come out and tell them, "I like you enough to invite you to the first part but I like Margie more so she gets to go to the whole thing. Sorry but you guys will need to find someone else for the car pool."
Even better, what if the groups don't realize what's going on UNTIL the wedding day?!
Just trim the damn list and invite only those you can host for the whole thing.
People are excited for you and may care about you but that does come with strings attached. Those strings are that they don't want a pity / consolation invitation. They want to be there for the entire thing. They don't want to be invited to just a small part of it because that's all you could swing while working within your vision. They'd rather just see you for drinks on a Friday if that's the case.
I'm close with plenty of people. But there aren't any people who could invite me to only part of the event while publicly showing me that I'm not welcome to the entire thing who can then expect me to be totally fine with the plan.
PPs are right; find another way to host everyone you are inviting. If they are traveling (which I'm assuming they are if its an island location) they deserve more than cake while your "close enough" guests get a real meal.
Would I feel like it was a huge slap in the face or even offended to find out we are shipped back to the mainland when others get to stay longer and even get their own private shuttle? Hell yeah.
To me what you are proposing is way worse, then just not getting an invitation.
From the description, it's almost like you're treating your wedding as an open house. You're expecting that people will be falling all over themselves to just hang out on an island all day and then stop by to see you get married and eat some cake and then be on their way. Truthfully, since my free time is precious to me and weddings cut into my weekend when I get stuff done, I would be taking the morning to run the errands that I normally do on the weekend, hit the gym, and then take an hour to get ready and leave in time to get to the wedding about 15-20 minutes early. Because I'm also a procrastinator, I'd probably be rushing at the last minute to buy a congratulations card along the way. Since the wedding would be the only reason I would be there, I'd feel pretty put out to discover that I wasn't one of the special 100 and getting booted off the island so you can have dinner.
What's sticking in my brain is an image of Survivor and putting out the torches. Your general guests are going to have their torches put out and told to leave while other people get to stay. Please don't do the wedding equivalent of voting off the island!
Great advice above.
So we are having 3 events: Ceremony, Reception (Cake, drinks, finger food), and then later that night, a joining of the families dinner which the wedding party will be at because we are staying on the island.
Would that be the best way to word it? As a merging of the families dinner?
However, I don't think it's appropriate to have it the same day as your wedding, and most especially not in the same place, after your other guests have left the island. Especially not if it's going to be as many as 50-100 people. This more intimate gathering is important, or at least it was to me, but you'll alienate and insult your other guests by doing it this way. Like I said before, have this dinner the day before or sometime after your wedding instead.
That's my point. If you want a small intimate dinner with these people then don't do it on your wedding day if you want others there.
But frankly, if you invited my to a ferry only destination for cake only I'd think you were out of your mind. If I'm most likely going to need to travel through meal times due to logistical issues that are YOUR CREATION then I think you should feed me a meal.
Which brings me back to my real first suggestion of cutting your guest list to those you want to feed at dinnertime.
Your other option Gilligan is to get off the island.
If you want to have a dinner for the families to "merge", do it another time.
Also, your families don't have to become BFFs. If they don't mesh, that's okay. My parents & my ILs have nothing in common except for us. My parents haven't seen my ILs since the wedding (my parents live 3 hours away).
ETA: Why not have a brunch the next morning for your families to mingle?
Are you going to turn Susan away? What happens when she misses the ferry because she assumes she is invited to the dinner too ( I would!).
The reason there is no word for it is because it is rude. If you MUST do it, take the ferry back with all of your guests, and plan it at a restaurant later that night.
There is no polite way to say to your guests "OK, you need to leave now so we can have dinner!"