Church reception with formal reception later

Bumping this for you!

This plan is totally fine and normal for large congregations. although depending on what time your ceremony starts, have you family at the cake/punch reception as well, then a few hours later, do the formal reception with your intended guests.

@Christina -thanks! Still early stages of planning, but thinking late morning/noon ceremony, directly followed by church reception, then mid afternoon formal reception. I figure this would be a good balance? FI and his family do not drink and look down on it, my family loves to party, so I'm thinking having it early will cut down on alcohol consumption (if it were up to FI it would be a dry reception, but i dont think my family would even show up if it were tbh!)

Anyone who gets an individual invitation to the wedding should be invited to the reception. However, if it's just an invitation to the whole congregation, they don't have to be invited to the reception, and cake and punch in the church hall is a nice touch.

I had the same think just not in terms of the drinking. My Fiance and I are heavily involved in church where my grandfather is pastor and his dad is. He wants to open the invite to the church congregation, but like u, i dont want everyone there at the reception so what Im doing is announcing my wedding ceremony to both churches publically but making the reception invitation only. With the reception we're doing it where we have someone at the door with all the guest names that way people who were not invited to the reception can't come. Hope this helps what we're also doing is having a gift table/money tree at the ceremony cite for those who want to give but arent invited to the reception.

This is really the only situation where an open invite and then a family reception is fine, and we catered a lot of these. Usually, cake, punch, coffee, possibly little wrap sandwiches with an invite going to the congregation.

But skip the money tree and gift table at the ceremony site. That's gift grabby, honestly.

Thanks all! Just have to convince FI of this.. I don't think he has a grasp on why inviting the congregation to the formal reception isn't a good idea haha

I'm doing a similar concept. My father has been the minister of a church since I've been born, so everyone thinks they need an invite. We are having a huge open invitation shower for the 300+ church members to come and share the day with us. Then we are having our wedding the next weekend with our large family and friends at a different location . It's not ideal, but it makes sure no feelings are hurt. The one bummer is since it's before I can't wear my dress, but it was a small price to pay to make sure I get to have memories with everyone. I think your idea sounds like it would work fine. I hope you can convince FH. Good luck!

Technically, all churches are "open invite" because they're public spaces. So I think this is completely fine.

Skip the giving tree/gift table. If people want to give you something, they'll find a way. Trust me.