Different days??

The reception typically is an event hosted by the wedding couple to thank the guests for taking the time to come to the ceremony. That's why it's usually on the same day.

During ****(covid) I went to a few after ceremony receptions for friends who got married. It was fun.

View Quoted Comment Yes, I’m aware of that. Thank you 😊

View Quoted Comment That’s nice to hear!

I was the MOH in a wedding where the reception was the night after the wedding. And tbh, it did not go well. LOTS of annoyed people. She fielded a ton of complaints from family prior to the wedding, and there was a lot of grumbling during. There was also a much lower turn out to the reception. A lot of people attended the wedding, but didn’t want to go out again for the reception.
On the other hand, I have also attended receptions for couples that eloped or had very small destination weddings, and they had pretty decent turnouts. Now that I think about it though, none of them had the same party atmosphere as receptions I’ve attended. Not that they were terrible or anything! Just not the same excitement level

I’ve seen it done at destination weddings where the guests will definitely be spending multiple days in the location. Like this is super specific, but it happens sometimes at weddings for Disney because ceremonies in the parks have to take place either before or after park hours. So sometimes if the ceremony is at midnight, they’ll maybe do a short event with cake and champagne right after and then do their full reception the next day.


Then, of course, there are a lot of people who do like a smaller ceremony and then have a big reception later with a more extensive guest list.

I’ve only seen this happen because a bad freeze here in Texas in February of 2021 forced our friend couple to move the reception to a separate day from the ceremony. We didn't go to either though because we personally didn't feel comfortable going to events yet with the way the pandemic was going and we weren't eligible to get vaccines at the time, so I'm not able to report how guests felt about it.

I must say Cece brings up a good point. I would also be very annoyed at having to plan on going out a second day for the reception, unless it was a destination wedding where the point is that we are spending a weekend there. I have a Hindu friend that combined this along with the fact that Hindu weddings are usually multiple events over multiple days. We all loved being out of town at a resort in the middle of the woods to get away, so no one cared there were 3 events over 2 days with the 3rd one being the actual reception.

Our ceremony was 3 PM, lasted an hour (Catholic ceremony), and then our reception was 5-10 PM, and we were surprised at how many of the 98 people got tired of being out for so long and left early, so I can just imagine that if we had split it into two days, the turnout would have been way worse.

View Quoted Comment I want to add that I did not go to the ceremonies as they were for parents and siblings only.

I work at a wedding decor rental company and yes it actually happens quite often that they’re on separate days! Most commonly it’s on the same day but it wouldn’t be totally unheard of to do seperate.

It is acceptable to have a very intimate ceremony and a delayed larger reception, but not the other way around. However, if everyone is being invited to both, that's not a considerate plan.

Never seen this work out with positive results. It’s inconvenient for guests and many feel that when they are not invited to the ceremony but they are invited to the reception that they are not “good enough” to witness what is the main purpose of the event which is the ceremony. If they aren’t allowed to see the ceremony they don’t understand what they are celebrating. We have attended a few “weddings” where guests are led to believe that the vow renewal or just a reception is the actual legal wedding and that the “legal” part is just for show. None of them ended well because the guests felt deceived and distanced themselves, whether it was a church family or relatives.