Destination ceremony, home reception

I would look this up a little bit more but basically what you could do back home as have a little small vow renewal but honestly I probably wouldn't go through the whole thing of having bridesmaids and stuff like that. I want to the bridesmaid and have to travel all the way from Florida to New York where my friend was getting married so your ladies that you're considering as bridesmaids you could ask him to come along. You can have a small destination wedding with just close family and a few girl that are willing to stand by your side. If it's a small group of people honestly I would say make it easier and just look for a restaurant that has maybe a private or semi-private space and just take them all out for dinner afterward. Back home you can have a post intimate wedding reception and something that my friend and her husband did because they kind of had to Celebration since their first wedding was in the place where they met at college she did a party at her parents house and she came out in her wedding dress even had her hair done and they just did a quick little bow renewal in front of the gas and then I went to the party. It was kind of low-key.

I'm in the same situation we want to do a beach wedding ceremony with only parents, siblings and their kids, and grandparents with a dinner after the ceremony.


Then a reception when we come back home, and invited all of our family members, work people and other friends that we want to celebrate with but didn't expect to shell out the money to go on vacation with us for the ceremony.

Our bridal party is only my best friend ( who I practically consider a sister lol) and his brothers so it's people who would already be invited anyways.
I was hoping to have my beach ceremony in June-August, then my back home reception after we get our pictures from the ceremony back so maybe November or December. I wanted to have both ( ceremony and reception)within the same year.
I wanted to be able to show off our ceremony photos at the reception since we didn't invite everyone special to us to the ceremony.
I plan to wear my dress to both the ceremony and the reception, but knowing Ohio weather I might have to wear something with my dress to stay warmer. I think it really depends on how much I spend on my dress, I'm open to a second dress but why not show off the dress from the ceremony.

If I do wear the same dress I am thinking about doing my hair or makeup different , I don't want to completely recreate the look from ceremony.

We're actually getting married in Jamaica and doing our reception in Sacramento. I purchased 2 dresses because we're doing our reception before the wedding and I WASN'T wearing my wedding dress before the ceremony. We aren't having bridesmaids in Jamaica but we have a bridal party for the reception. We chose to do the reception 3 weeks before the ceremony to give us time to recoup and I didn't want to plan or worry about anything else when we came back from Jamaica. We are doing our wedding/reception our way and it feels great to go against the norm. We're spending 7 days in Jamaica so we'll be enjoying our honeymoon and relaxing before coming back to real life. I'm so excited that all of our planning will end in absolute bliss.

View Quoted Comment That's how I feel too plus like if you have it professionally done you probably won't have the same person to do it. I kinda wanna do one of those in the water shoots, I know dry cleaning can prevent it from ruining the dress. So I'm like ehhhhhh maybe I should do a back up just in case lol.

View Quoted Comment I didn't even think of waiting until you get the pictures back that's such a good idea!! That would fit in well with my other idea, my dads parents were my entire world growing up and the one example of love/happy marriage I had, my grandma left me her ring with a not she hopes it brings me the blessings of a wonderful love like theirs. They both passed as well as my Dad. And my fiancé was extremely close with his Grandfather. When memories by maroon 5 came out I immediately knew I wanted to play it alongside a slideshow of all those we wish could have been there. We decided not tell tell anyone, especially his mom to surprise them, we know she'd love it. So having ceremony pictures would be perfect!


My plan is to show off the dress but I'm actually starting to like the idea of in the water shoots. I've read dry cleaning can make the dress look perfect again but like I don't wanna risk it not then being last minute looking for a dress. But again still up in the air!
We are talking October (my grandparents anniversary actually) so we'd be in the same boat of probably a December reception! Definitely didn't want to do it the second we get back from our honeymoon haha.

View Quoted Comment I never thought about doing the reception before hand, that's actually a great idea! I was worried about timing when we got back, and not having to scramble or keep stressing about it!

We did a small DW then a local reception three months later. No wedding party for either. For our local reception, we wore our wedding attire (I bought a different wedding dress). We didn’t do a vow renewal, but we wanted a formal party so we had drinks, dinner and a live and for dancing. We did first dances and the cake cutting there, not at our DW.