Greeting Guests at Cocktail Hour

We will be going around to each table to take a group/table picture and say hello/thank you to everyone. We will have about 250 guests. I have seen this done before. It works really well because you have the photographer to make sure you get a picture with everyone and to keep things moving along.

I would be careful trying to say hello to people at cocktail hour because some guests like to monopolize your time and suddenly you have spent 20 minutes talking to Uncle Frank and didn't get to say hello to your other guests.

So I didn't have that many people, but I didn't see anyone during the cocktail hour. We took a lot of pictures during it, and then when we were done my bridesmaids and I went into a separate room so we could just relax for a bit. My husband walked around though, and he was able to talk to a lot of people. We didn't go to each table during the reception because people were moving around and dancing, but we did try our best to acknowledge/thank everyone individually.

We are doing a receiving line during cocktail hour. This way we get a chance to say hi and thank you to everyone but still get to enjoy the rest of the night knowing we acknowledged everyone.

View Quoted Comment

Would you do that during dinner? How much time are you allotting? I just really want to prioritize eating (lol) and being able to enjoy the reception instead of going on a tour of the tables. Agreed that one of my moms distant friends who I haven't seen in 15 years would be the one to hook onto me though so we may end up having to do the table greeting during dinner.

View Quoted Comment

My fear with a receiving line with that many guests is that they will spend the entire cocktail hour standing in a line. How many guests are you having/how much time are you allotting for the receiving line?

View Quoted Comment

Yes during dinner. We are having a family style dinner with multiple courses being brought out so dinner takes over an hour. We have 22 tables but with 2 being for our bridal party we can skip those. We figure no more than 2 minutes a table for "hello, thanks for coming" and a photo. About 40 minutes which leaves 20 minutes or so to eat.

Oh that does sound reasonable!

204 guests and ultimately the whole hour but could be less depending on when everyone show up. We have our ceremony and reception at two different places so arrival time for reception can vary on guests. There may be a line but the guests won’t be standing in a line for the whole hour. The whole point of the receiving line is for the short and sweet hellos but still giving us a chance to acknowledge their presence. For a guest taking too long my ticket out will be to cueing them to the place card table or to the food and drinks. And for myself and FH wanting a bite or drink we can recruit a bridal party member for that.

We had 160 guests and were able to greet everyone during cocktail hour.

I don't think you'll get to everyone during cocktail hour, but it's a great start. At our wedding (we had 125 guests) we sat down & ate super quickly while other guests went to the buffet, when they came back we talked to everyone in between the speeches. We got to everyone in under 1 hour. We also had a ton of pre and post wedding activities and involved everyone if they wanted to be.