AIBU to invite all guests to wedding ceremony and evening reception...

[OveranxiousUnderated]

But...pinch 50 of them for a Wedding Breakfast in-between. :o

Basically, I have a huge dilemma and I need help/advice!

We are on a very limited budget, and the breakfast/ceremony are all included in a fixed price which consists of 50 guests for the breakfast, and 100 for the evening. The church holds 100+ which is approximately how many guests we have on the list, so technically it is feasible for everybody to attend the ceremony AND evening reception, however at £50 per head for the meal...this is not an option!!

Now, I am aware that I probably am BU, as it's rude to expect people to come to the ceremony and not the breakfast, no?! So should I just have the people coming to the meal to the wedding? Then have an entirely seperate evening list?

(Please don't tell suggest elimating the breakfast etc, as deposit is paid...so no changing the set up now! However I realise that it would have been far less hassle to have a later wedding (3pm as opossed to 1pm) followed by an evening reception. Meh. )

So does anyone have any advice for me/experience regarding this situation? As time is running out & I have no idea how to 'word' the invitations either.

Oh and just for reference the 50 people would consist of close family & friends.

This is my first post so please be kind! TIA.

could you have the breakfast in the evening? - and have the 100 back to the hotel for drink, speeches tea and cake. The B list leave and then the A list stay on to eat and party.

Easy! You just need 2 types of invitation. 50 get the whole day invitation, 50 get the evening-only invitation with the added sentence 'we would also love to see you at the ceremony at x church at 1pm' or whatever. I have had invitations like this myself and wouldn't consider it rude at all. People then have the option to come to the ceremony if they want, or not if it means hassle for them. As someone said earlier most people these days understand that due to cost you can't always invite everyone to the whole thing.

Lots of people do this.

You just send evening invitations to the people that you want there for the evening, with an extra little 'you are also welcome to attend the ceremony at xxxx'

Look on Debretts for invitation wording.

If you want to be extra generous you could suggest a pub for lunch or something nearby, and tell your guests that there will be a drink on arrival from you both. But if all the evening guests live nearby, this shouldn't be neccesary, just a nice touch to show you have thought of them.

YABU - it's a rubbish idea. You are basically expecting people to give up a whole day for your wedding, including the hanging around in the middle all dressed up with no place to go. They will have spent money on clothes, babysitters etc and a pressie and you won't even feed them! Just invite them to the evening bit then, that way expectations are managed.

This happened to me and colleagues at a work guys wedding and half of us accidentally crashed the "breakfast" as some of us had been invited to all and some to wedding/eve only but as we hadn't compared invites nobody realised. It was seriously weird. We were expected to wait around for 4 hrs in some strange town that we'd all travelled to. Turned up at the eve do hammered btw.

I've always thought this was the norm! Perhaps that's just my family's way of doing it. Anyway, when I got married it was not feasible to have everybody to everything. My family and husband's family combined is quite large, so there just wasn't room at the venue to have anybody else at the sit down meal, so all friends were invited to the wedding and evening do only. Nobody complained or turned up to the wrong bit.

I just sent out 2 different invitations, one clearly stating that person was invited to wedding, plus reception and evening do, and one saying the time of the wedding (2pm I think) and the time of the evening do to which they were also invited.

Because to me this is the norm, I would not be upset about receiving a similar invitation myself, inviting me to only the wedding ceremony and the evening do. I have also had quite a few invites to just the evening do, as the ceremony is in a country house or somewhere and just open to those who are also going to the meal. But for a church I would expect details of when and where the ceremony is along with my evening do invitation so I can go to that too.

I can't move the time of the wedding unfortunately, it is at 1pm (on a Saturday of a Bank Holiday weekend) and the other slots are fully booked. However, it wouldn't really help anyway as we have secured the venue with a large deposit, so we have to have a 'breakfast' and an evening reception regardless, iyswim. (Well more like we have paid for it - so we are having it!)

I really appreciate your replies and understand that some people find it rude/uneccessary etc. I know it's not really an 'excuse' but I live in a very small town, and so do the large majority of guests (5/10 mins to church max) so there isn't going to be many people left 'hanging around for hours' or in an 'unfamiliar area' etc as some posters have suggested.

I think the best idea is for me to invite the 50 people to wedding & breakfast (and evening reception obv) and then invite the other 50+ to evening do with an additional slip expressing how we would love them to attend the ceremony if they wish to? Leave the ball in their court so to speak.

I would love all my friends/family to be able to see the speeches etc but unfortunately money is tight, so we are left with no option but to pick & choose. It is very hard, and myself and DP (DP in particular) have large families...both parents on each side are separated and re-married so that's 8 'parents' already! All GP'S still alive, sisters, nephews etc etc. We have reached 40 already including only close family, which allows for a few close friends to be included and then that's it really.

Thanks for all the advice. :)

I did this and I feel a bit bad about it even now but it was the only way we could have all our friends see us get married. We basically invited 50 people to the register office (50 was the capacity) and then took our families and very closest friends for a meal. Then everyone came to the evening bit. It wasn't ideal but it was the only way we could afford it. We told everyone what was happening and they seem to accept it. Anyone we thought would be funny about it was just invited to the evening do. All those who really wanted to see us get married were prepared to go off and do lunch themselves and I think they had a great time. Although most of these people had not travelled far so knew the city and could even pop home inbetween if they wanted to.

Maybe I should add the day plan...

Ceremony at Church - 1pm
Sit down meal- 3pm (ish)
Evening do - 7pm

No flexibility with that for those who suggested changing the order etc.

omg. that's even worse, they're giving up a Bank hol weekend to see you married too. 2-tier weddings really are pants.

"omg. that's even worse, they're giving up a Bank hol weekend to see you married too"

Someone who felt that way wouldn't be particularly welcome anyway! At the end of the day, all of our close family and friends are going to be invited, no one is forcing them to come. It is entirely up to them.

Obviously money isn't tight if you can afford 50 quid a head.

True, people can always decline if they feel snubbed or find the invite rude.

Bless you.

"Obviously money isn't tight if you can afford 50 quid a head."

We have paid a (reduced) set fee for an inclusive deal of 50/100 guests.

Additional guests are £50 ph, hence why we can't afford additonal guests.

And yes, believe me, money is tight.

To be honest I think it's a little bit pathetic if adults can't find some way to amuse themselves for a few hours in between a ceremony and an evening do. Some people seem to have a massive sense of entitlement. It's your wedding, organise it as you like. As long as you tell people what you're doing and what they're invited to then if they don't like it they have the option of declining.

I travelled from another country back to the UK to see an old school friend getting married and this was what happened with us (we went to the church, then buggered off to the pub, then rolled came back for the evening do). TBH we didn't mind at all - nobody has a limitless budget and it gave us a break from all the formalities with other old friends and to get to know some of the other guests more informally before spending an evening with them.
Maybe you could suggest some half-decent places to drink eat in a kind of informal letter with the invite so there's a chance some of them could go somewhere together rather than being left high and dry if they don't know the area.
Good luck, seems there's so much wedding protocol in the UK - here you either get an invite just to the church/reg office or to the church and the binge do afterwards.

I can understand the church capacity -v- cost of feeding this number of people argument but still think that invitations that have to say what a guest isn't invited to are simply wrong and bound to cause some element of confusion or misunderstanding.

It'd be better to accept that if you can't afford to feed a church full of people then you invite only those that can go straight onto the wedding breakfast and then send evening only invitations out to everyone else.

It's very difficult to avoid misunderstandings when people are invited to a morning or lunchtime ceremony and then only the evening do because some people will genuinely assume that they are invited to everything. Others will wonder why you want their attendance at church if they are merely to be sent away afterwards until the final act of the three ring circus wedding.

The last two weddings I attended worked well and went like this:
Wedding 1 - 3.30pm in a church that also held about 100 people. Straight after wedding, all guests at the ceremony were invited to a small champagne and nibbles do in the room alongside the chapel. All guests then went onto the evening venue where they were joined by about another 80 friends who'd been invited to the evening do only. So everyone who went to the ceremony had an all day invite. Evening guests had evening only invite.

Wedding 2 - 11.30pm in registry office which holds 45 people. Room nicely filled by close family and friends who all went out to the delightful gardens at the register office after the ceremony for a fag break mingle and for pictures. Then straight onto local pub where a buffet reception was held in their function room. Wedding party dispersed at about 4 and went home before going out in the evening to a local festival which was attended by lots of friends and family and the beer tent was the focus of a very jolly evening. Again though, all ceremony guests attended all "formal" parts of the day.

The two weddings couldn't have been more different in many ways but nobody felt excluded from either of them and neither were there any misunderstandings about which part of the day people were permitted to attend.

So, if I were you, OP, I'd not get into the complication of telling people what they can't attend but keep things simple. Day or evening. Er, that's it.

YANBU at all, and I think the formal evening invitation with a note saying they're welcome to come the church is ideal

You're not forcing anyone to hang around, you're offering to let them choose to either just come in the evening or come to the church if they want

I've had a few friends do this, I've gladly given up my weekend bank holiday or not and twice a group of us have booked a late lunch and/or gone to the pub in between the church and evening do so we had somewhere to "hang about" in our wedding outfits and had a whale of a time

I completely disagree that it'll create ill feeling too - I've always understood that a full day invite is expensive and therefore limited to close friends and family, given that for most weddings there's a limited budget and I'm sure the people will know you and your circumstances well enough to understand it's not a snub - Good luck and enjoy your day

OP, my DH and I did exactly the same. If people get all arsey about it, well they don't have to come! People get so self-righteous about wedding arrangements - as long as you are not being a total cow about things (which you really don't sound like you are IMO), just ignore the moaners.

Hope you have a wonderful day.

And stripesnotspots, shame that you hadn't spotted the different wordings on the invites amongst your colleagues, but it sounds like some of you were invited because the couple felt it would be unfair to invite some but not all colleagues. So instead of being gracious about it, you crashed (albeit accidentally) then turned up hammered in the evening. Ghastly. You should have gone home/turned down the invite.

It is a complete pain in the arse being invited only to non-continuous parts of a wedding, especially if it's in an unfamiliar place. As others have said, you end up overdressed in some dodgy pub for hours.

It's the norm where I grew up to have a full wedding invite or an evening-only invite. Those coming in the evening don't usually go to the ceremony.

Personally, however, I think it's best to either downgrade your expectations to fit your budget and how many people you want to invite or invite fewer people. I really dislike the hierarchy in wedding a and b lists. If I don't like someone enough to pay for their dinner invite them to the whole thing, I don't like them enough to invite them at all. I also feel no obligation to invite relatives I haven't seen for ages and whose address or phone number I'd need to procure from my parents because I don't know it.

And, yeuch to 'wedding breakfast'. Fine if you're having bacon and eggs at 9am, but wedding 'breakfasts' are nothing of the sort.

IME, if you don't turn up at least a bit pissed to the evening bit of a wedding, you'll be the only sober one there as they've all been quaffing cheap sparkling wine champagne for hours on an empty stomach while they wait for the bride and groom to stop with the bloody photoshoot so they can eat something. They've usually missed lunch too because the timing of weddings never seems to fit with normal meal times.

OP, ignore the negative comments that have been posted on here, what you are proposing to do is perfect.

I very highly doubt anyone will be offended or put out, and if they are, then they are the obligatory guests who will find something to complain about no matter what you do. Every wedding has to have at least one. It's bad luck otherwise!

You will never keep everyone completely happy, I bent over backwards to make my wedding guests happy, they really were the priority throughout all our planning. There were still two that complained behind our backs - the ones that were only invited to keep MIL happy, and thankfully the people they chose to complain to were delighted for us and told them to shove it.

Also, really do look on Debretts, I haven't looked for ages, but I am sure that what you are going to do is good ettiquete. I'm almost certain that they say you should invite evening guests to the ceremony. And if it's good enough for debretts, it's good enough for me!

Despite totally not understanding this whole two tier wedding thing, I don't think you're being unreasonable.

I agree with the other people who suggested doing two invitations - one which is for the ceremony + breakfast, and a second one for the evening bit, saying that they're free to go to the ceremony if they want, giving times etc. If people ask - say that the breakfast will be for close family. People (well, reasonable ones anyway) can't get het up about not being included in a family event, and may actually be relieved.

I don't see what everyone is getting their knickers in a twist about.

She has already said that it will be the standard daytime followed by evening guests.

All she wants to do is offere evning guest the chance to see her married. They don't have to come if they don't want to, but some people like that kind of thing.No reason for anyone to to hang about strange towns, or come if they have travelled a long way away. It's the guests CHOICE if they come to the ceremony