Intimate Ceremony + Everyone invited to social-dinner-dance

Is there a specific reason why you don’t want people to attend your ceremony and just attend the reception?

It's considered rude to invite people to the reception only because it sends the message that they aren't important enough to witness the vows. The same goes for inviting people to the ceremony only and not allowing them to attend the reception. There isn't a per person price for the ceremony like there is for the reception.


If save the dates have gone out already, then everyone on your list needs to be invited to both events.

Are there restrictions on how many you can have at the church? While Jana is right, it’s rude to invite someone to the reception but not the ceremony, Covid has obviously made a lot of us make difficult decisions. If it’s due to restrictions, I’d word it that way. Could you try to live stream the ceremony so everyone who can’t be present can watch?

I’m doing the same thing! Small ceremony and big reception... it’s your wedding and you should be able to do it the way you want to! 🤗

In my opinion, it is fine to keep the ceremony intimate and have a large reception. Inviting everyone to the ceremony, but, restricting the reception to only certain guests is insulting since that is where the $ is spent for food/drink, etc.

I am the mother of the bride. My daughter is having a small intimate ceremony with immediate family (20). She plans to have 80 at the reception. (wedding is now 2022). The invitations for the reception will be worded...…Celebrate the Marriage of "M" and "J". There is no need for ceremony invitations since immediate family knows the details.

I can definitely see where covid makes this more acceptable. But there are many other reasons why you might do this. Many destination weddings will still host a reception back home. If your ceremony venue is small and won’t allow but so many guests (again with covid this number is impacted). And then there’s just the reason of preference. My mom had wanted to invite the whole church; however my dad would’ve rather just had a simple service with no one there but the required witnesses. What happened was a Thursday night ceremony at the church with around 20 in attendance and an open reception at my grandparents house directly after with everyone else. But there were hurt feelings at not being invited to the ceremony. So much that when her twin sister got married a few months later, several didn’t attend because they hadn’t been invited to mom’s, which is spiteful and rude on its own, especially when it was my dad’s fault to start with and certainly not my aunt’s.