Bride and Groom Joining into Cocktail Hour

We plan on joining our cocktail hour. Our DJ is going to make an announcement about 10to 15 minutes before its over that dinner will be served shortly and for guests to make their way to their tables. While guests are getting seated the bridal party will line up. Once everyone is seated, we are doing a quick entrance with introductions, the cake cutting, welcome toast, and then dinner. During the first courses (soup and salad), our best men and maid/Matron of honor will be doing joint toasts. My dad is going to say something too I think. Once dinner is just about done, we are doing our first dance and parent dances (pretty much while dessert is being served). Hopefully, if everything goes okay, dinner should take about an hour, including dances, and then its party time!

We will join cocktail hour if possible, but we won’t be introduced. We will still do a grand entrance into the reception.

I briefly mingled with guests and then left to prepare for the reception

We are taking all of our pictures before the ceremony. After the ceremony we will be thanking everyone as they walk over to the patio for cocktail hour (so we don't have to go table to table) then we are going to go sign our paper and have a minute with just our wedding party then join cocktail hour and mingle. We will then stay outside on the patio as everyone goes inside to their seats and then we will be introduced.

We joined cocktail hour at our wedding. We didn't do introductions of any kind. We had our ceremony out on a deck and the cocktail hour was on an adjacent terrace. We went out front for a little after the ceremony and then went to the cocktail hour. We took the majority of our pictures before the ceremony. We had a few extended family shots taken during cocktail hour.

We plan on joining our guests for cocktail hour. We will do first look, wedding party pictures & family pictures before the ceremony - and plan on enjoying the full reception merriment.

We’re going to join our cocktail hour after our yichud. After mingling and saying hi to peeps - of course eating our amazing appetizers, im not missing out n the menu I wrote! - we’re going to sneak away and be introduced by the DJ and go into our first dance before speeches then dinner.

I'm glad you asked this because I want to do this as well and was looking for guidance!

We joined cocktail hour after our ceremony. We weren't introduced and just took time to mingle, greet and thank all our guests for coming so we didn't have to do table visits during the reception. We were then introduced at the beginning of our reception and after we were introduced and walked in, we went right into our first dance.

So we plan on doing a first look so we can enjoy cocktail hour. I wasn’t planning on being introduced in, rather taking it as a time to mingle with our guests and make our hellos instead of having to go table to table during the reception or doing a welcome line. My FSIL did this on her wedding as well, and it worked out great.

View Quoted Comment Yes!! Me too!

We joined the end of our cocktail hour after some pictures. Our DJ did a full bridal party intro and then we did our first dance before mingling with everyone. It worked out perfectly.

We went to ours and I’m so glad we did! We didn’t do a big introduction then (it wouldn’t have worked for us, as our venue was set up so that guests were pretty spread out during cocktail hour), but just mingled with our guests. Then when the DOC moved everyone into the reception, we hung back with our bridal party and parents and all were introduced at the start of the reception. I totally recommend going to your cocktail hour - it was the only time we really got to eat, and the best time to actually chat with guests! Our photographer did pull us out for pictures for about 15 minutes, but we had done most of them before the ceremony so it was quick. This worked out well because our photographer then got great photos of all our guests during cocktail hour!

We aren't, but I was in a wedding in 2017 that did. They took a few pictures then just mingled. Then they were announced into the reception after everyone sat down.

For our wedding, we didn't do a first look so our formal photos were during cocktail hour. Basically the photographers did family photos then sent them in for cocktail hour, then bridal party and sent them in, then some of just my husband and I and then we went in. We just walked right in and went around saying hi to guests for about 15 mins. Then the maitre 'd (venue staff that handled everything the day of) got us, our parents and bridal party and had us line up in the hallway to the reception area, once all of the guests were in the reception area (they went in a different way so they weren't passing us in the hallway) and we had the DJ do the introductions into the reception

We'll be doing a receiving line during cocktail hour.

I don't particularly understand the idea of the Bride and Groom coming into the reception and mingling only to excuse themselves just to be formally introduced with music and stuff.

If you decide to do this, just make sure you make it clear to the caterer what you're doing because I would think people would just start eating whatever is on their plate (like the first course) thinking there's no introductions. So have the caterer not bring out the first course until after the introductions.

We just walked into our cocktail hour, no introductions.

View Quoted Comment Usually the cocktail hour is in a different room or area than the reception. So everyone would be going into a different space and the bride and groom would go in last and be introduced.

We joined our cocktail hour and then just went straight to dinner. We were announced as husband and wife at the end of the ceremony. I personally hate the big introduction thing - people know who we are - so we just skipped it.

We just kind of walked in and chatted with people along the way (this photo exemplifies it— no muss no fuss but yay we’re both relieved to be back! But kind of snuck in while no one was watching. Haha)

we had our (quick and simple) formal introductions at the reception— when everyone went in to be seated, we and the bridal party hung back , quickly did up my bustle, and had our proper introductions.

This also worked out nicely bc we really only had a chance to mingle with one corner of the cocktail hour area , so it was nice not to have made a big thing of it