Inviting people to reception, not wedding.

Unless you're having an *extremely* small ceremony (immediate family only kind of thing), you are correct, this is rude. The important part of the day is the ceremony - you're essentially telling people that they're good enough to celebrate with you (and give you a gift) but not good enough to watch you get married.

If you got married during COVID, then obviously things are a little different, then you have your ceremony now (soon) and have a year or so until your big reception.

I think that if it's due to COVID then it's fine but most people don't like the idea. However, if your family and friends won't have a problem with it then go for it. COVID has changed many things and honestly you can do whatever you want for your big day.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this. If you're having a larger ceremony, but still only inviting some guests to the reception that immediately follows, those guests may feel hurt that they weren't invited to the most important part of the day (the ceremony). If you were doing a super small/private ceremony with only immediate family and wedding party, but inviting everyone to the reception, I think that would make more sense and wouldn't be rude to invite most people to reception only. If you're doing a small ceremony now due to COVID, but delaying the larger reception until later, I also think it's fine to invite most people to only the reception in that case.

It’s definitely not OK to invite people like that (regardless of COVID). It’s an all or nothing kind of thing. Personally, I would be extremely hurt if someone did that to me. Message being “you’re good enough to come to the reception & bring a gift but not the ceremony”. I’m thinking that’s definitely not your intention but that’s the way it’ll come across.
I have a large family, him not so much, tons of friends & plus he’s a firefighter so we have our fire family. If we invited everyone our #’s would have been in the 250ish range. That’s something we just couldn’t afford & definitely don’t want. We made allot of changes & then changed it again. We got the list to around 90 guests. My Plan B is going to be around 35. Hopefully we won’t have to use Plan B!

I wouldn't recommend it, improper ettiquite.

Thanks all...I thought this was a bad idea. But he was so "of course people do this" I thought maybe it was a thing. Thank you... 👍

Generally people might find that offensive. I personally don’t care. When I was younger I did a lot of volunteering in my religion on Saturdays. So some weddings I was just invited to the reception because of my schedule. But that didn’t bother me and II still felt a lot of love and support for the couple even if I didn’t get to witness them say their vows together. I didn’t change my happiness for them, but that is just me. Other people have said to me in conversation that they would still have found it rude not to be invited regardless of their schedule. I don’t know if I would personally do that because people are so different just to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes

I agree with the PPs. This is NOT something that people do! The exception would be if you had a really tiny ceremony (i.e with immediate family only), but otherwise it's very rude and basically puts your guests into tiers. If you're set on keeping this venue then I would start cutting the guest list.

There really isn't any polite way to do that. Only invite those who you are willing and able to have at both. People say Covid gives permission to break etiquette right and left but really it should enforce it because that's how you navigate social situations.