Etiquette question: Destination wedding + celebration at a later date

We were going to have an after party (which got cancelled in the end) 5 weeks after our intimate wedding and due to the timing of it (and wanting our friends and extended family to know they were invited to the subsequent celebration), we had sent out the invitations to the after party before our wedding. While ours never went ahead, we had intended it just to be a party because we felt a bit silly at the prospects of re-wearing our wedding attire again, doing a formal cake cutting, having speeches etc (as all suggested by our parents) and didn’t want it to come across as some make up wedding for those that weren’t invited to the actual wedding.

Since there is a much larger gap in time between yours, you could perhaps send out save the dates for the after party in advance so people are aware of it before they receive formal invitations. With that said, this party is almost 2 years away so I wouldn’t worry about it just yet.

Regarding the bridal shower, considering that it would be before September but likely prior to save the dates or invitations going out for the after party, I would personally stick to etiquette here and keep it to just those invited to the wedding, otherwise it will come across as gift grabby.

I definitely wouldn't consider 65 guests to be intimate--that's quite large by many standards! I also wouldn't invite anyone to pre-wedding events who isn't invited to the actual wedding (especially a bridal shower because it will come across as gift grabby). I would probably wait to send after party invitations until after your wedding, and I think serving wedding cake is a great idea since it goes with the theme.

The 65 people are your wedding guests. Any of those people can be invited to the shower.

One possible reason you might be struggling with this concept is that it comes across as a "tiered" wedding because of the large number of people at the "real" wedding. You may run the risk of the afterparty seeming like a consolation event for the people that weren't eligible to go to the main event. For this concept to work, it's better to have the real wedding as an elopement or immediate family only then an afterparty for everyone else, so everyone feels equal.

So we're also getting married in Italy and had similar thoughts, but more so wanting to offer a local celebration since we knew not everyone we wanted to invite would be able to make the trek across the world. So we sent Save the Dates with our website to everyone we would have invited (so like the 150 guests you're hoping to ultimately celebrate with), and on the website we wrote that we plan to have a local celebration so that we can celebrate with all our loved ones as we understood everyone wouldn't be able to make it - we just wanted to take the pressure off of some people who we knew would have a harder time. Word of advice - the 65 people you're inviting, I wouldn't count on all of them making it in the end... when we first started circulating the thought of Italy for our wedding, SOOOO many people were into it and said they'd come. It was looking like 80% of our guest list was genuinely interested in and planning to attend. It wasn't until our invites officially made it out that people really thought about the logistics and cost of travelling, and only about 50% of our guest list will be attending - this is honestly more people than we initially thought before talking to people about their interest level. But I'm saying this because not all 65 people you invite to Italy would likely make it, and the rest of the 85 people that you're considering only for the after-celebration, most of them (like more than 50%) probably wouldn't come if they are people you're either not as close to or have various constraints that would make travelling difficult for them. My recommendation is honestly to invite everyone, see who makes it, and then have your local celebration with the same set of invitees - I think you'll see that most of the people you'd consider ineligible for the first celebration will pick the local celebration on their own, and that way you avoid the faux pas.

I should add that for us, in the end we decided to only have a local celebration with our grandparents for our legal ceremony since we're getting legally married here before heading to Italy as they simply cannot travel anymore. We started to feel silly about the idea of making people celebrate us twice as time went by - not to mention that for us, we have family all over the place (different states) and either way it would have entailed travel for them. Those who declined to travel to Italy were also people who've declined to travel to our city for other family members' weddings, so we doubt they would come if we did something in the US.

For the sake of your sanity (and finances) I'd keep the afterparty as simple, unstructured, and informal as possible. If you want to wear a wedding dress, cut a cake, get announced, that's all great. But a traditional wedding reception typically requires a lot of planning, coordination, and wrangling multiple vendors. After planning one wedding, you'll likely find yourself burnt out and not wanting to plan a second.


Because you are inviting 65 people to the destination wedding, I would restrict the bridal shower/luncheon to those invitees. 65 is a small wedding, but it's not so small that anyone would expect you to have a second party to accommodate more people. Essentially, the destination is the "true" wedding. These are the guests that were close enough to make the cut. I'm not sure why you are not inviting all 150 people to the destination. It's not going to cut costs by much to have a second party, and 65 is a big overlap of people being asked to celebrate you twice.
I believe you are supposed to send out invites 6 weeks before, so I'd stick to that schedule. However, let the destination wedding invitees know they will also be invited to the second party. Many guests will likely opt to attend the second party