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Wedding Etiquette Forum
Small ceremony with big party/reception after
My fiance and I are planning on having a small ceremony for our wedding. My fiance does not have parents/grandparents alive to be present and so he would like some of his close friends and their parents to be present. I have my family (parents, brother and very close friends) coming from across the country. I think we would be able to keep it under 30 people for the ceremony. I am interested on opinions of having the ceremony on a Friday afternoon and then having all weekend to celebrate and be around great family and friends. We live in Colorado and are thinking of a weekend celebration (+ ceremony) in the mountains. Has anyone been to anything like this?? I think it would be fun for some of my friends that have never been to Colorado to have all weekend to relax and experience it with us.
Re: Small ceremony with big party/reception after
I'd move the wedding to the weekend.
Some other things we felt we needed to do: step up the hosting. If we were having a weekday night wedding we wanted to really host well. So top shelf open bar, tons of apps and good food, valet, late night snacks, etc. And then hosting another event during the weekend. My BIL hosted a BBQ the next day for everyone to drop by. We felt if we were asking people to give up their weekend we should have stuff to do.
If I miss interpreted the title of your post, my apologies.
But you get one day. Please don't do a weekend of tiered events that only some people are invited too. It is a recipe for a logistical nightmare and ruined friendships.
If you do your Friday ceremony, you must host everyone immediately afterwards for a meal (especially if people are flying in for it). That is your wedding. Anything held afterwards is not related to your wedding. And you are choosing not to celebrate with the rest of your great family or friends. Which is fine, but you can't be sad about this as it is your choice.
If you want to do a bigger event, have a saturday wedding and invite everyone. If cost is an issue, do it more casual.
What you can't do is say you want an intimate wedding then be upset that it is considered rude to invite others to later, B-list parties.
Either small wedding, or celebrate with everyone- both are fine options. But you have to choose one and stick by it.
Own your choice.
If you want a full weekend of being together with people that you invite to your ceremony, I would suggest the following:
Friday Night - welcome party at local pub or house.
Saturday later afternoon/evening - ceremony and reception
Sunday - brunch and perhaps a hike in the afternoon
In saying all that, all opportunities are just that, opportunities. You shouldn't expect guests to attend anything or everything outside the ceremony and immediate reception.
I had a weekday wedding but the majority were in town and shift workers or those that regular go out in the evening and it worked well for my crowd. It wouldn't have worked well if I was trying to get people together for multiple events over a few days or had people coming in after their last workday (like a Friday evening). Everyone that traveled to my wedding was already coming because of previously planned vacation or were retired.
Like some PPs, I just want to clarify if you were wanting to have an intimate/small ceremony and invite more people to the party? If so, that is not appropriate. If I misinterpreted that, I'm sorry.
That aside, the mountain resorts would be amazing for a wedding. I'd travel for that (if invited to the ceremony, otherwise, why bother?). The resorts have spas, and if you have the wedding in the shoulder season it would be less expensive, less crowded, and people can go hiking or white water rafting or something while they're there. I like when destination weddings have lots of activities for guests that aren't necessarily "wedding" events- just stuff to do on one's own time besides sit with a frosty at the local Wendy's.
What confuses me is if you invite more guests for the weekend events but not to the ceremony on Friday. I just don't understand the small ceremony/huge party unless it's legit immediate family only and even then it only makes sense if it's local-ish. I personally wouldn't travel for a weekend celebration for a wedding to which I wasn't invited. I'm not a super big fan of planned, group vacations, and would feel even more awkward if I wasn't invited to the wedding. My apologies if that isn't your plan; I couldn't tell from the wording.
It kind of sounds like you want a ceremony on Friday with 30 people, then more people and another ceremony on Saturday...?
Your wedding isn't a weekend festival with performances every night. It's one ceremony, one reception, on one day. Sure you can have other parties like ernursej suggested, but you need to invite everyone to everything and multiple ceremonies just doesn't make any sense unless it's a religious or cultural thing.
I'm with the other PPs. A ceremony with only 30 close friends and family, but then a "destination wedding weekend" for other people who weren't even invited to the actual ceremony is awful and completely ridiculous. At least, that was my interpretation of your post.
If I misunderstood and it is all the same group that is invited to the ceremony, then a longer weekend of hanging out with close friends and loved ones does sound nice. But only if you all understand that some people might prefer to go out and do their own thing. I also think you should host some of the weekend. Like a casual cook-out on a different day from the wedding. Plan and lead a hike on your all's favorite trail. That kind of thing.
As an example, I live in NOLA. But grew up in So. CA. and got married back in my hometown. Which happens to be a beachside resort town. Small wedding with 35 guests. The only people coming from NOLA were ourselves and our BM and his g/f. 5 other guests were family also coming from OOT. Everyone else was local. In addition to the wedding on Sat., my mom also hosted a rehearsal dinner on Fri. night and a brunch on Sun., though only family and BM and his g/f were invited to the extra events.
It WAS great for us!!! We got to spend so much extra time with family we don't normally see. But not everyone invited stayed for all or even attended every event. They also wanted to go out and do their own things. That was great, too. I was glad the OOT guests enjoyed other things about their trip, other than just my wedding.
I’d also plan one really well-hosted party for everyone to attend, as opposed to several events at different points of the weekend.
Etiquette is fine with this; the only thing etiquette objects to is the converse: hosting only a small celebration after inviting a larger number to witness the ceremony.
More recently, the focus has shifted to the reception, so people feel slighted if they aren't included. For this reason, I agree with you that it's fine to have a small ceremony, especially if it's a religious one, and a large party afterward, but it can be hurtful. Last summer, a friend of my daughter's got married in the state where she went to college and only had a few people (his family, some of her family, and a handful of college friends) there. She later had a large party at her parents' home (in her home state), but to my daughter, it felt like a consolation prize.