Inviting the church

I'm in a similar situation but attend a very very small church. To keep things fair I am inviting everyone from my church but I know some will not attend since I am doing a DW wedding. Helps to ensure there is no awkwardness.

If you want to invite the entire church typically receiving line, cake & punch early in the day at the church.

This sounds okay if you aren't having a reception, or if you are having a cake and punch reception.

This is pretty common. You invite via a bulletin notice or an announcement from the pulpit. You don't send invites to anyone.

After the ceremony, you do cake and punch and then proceed on, with the invited guests, to the reception. It's not considered tiered, but I wouldn't send individual invites except possibly to your pastor if she/he is invited to the actual reception.

That's a tricky thing. For my first wedding (I was divorced a few years ago), my former FIL was a pastor, so we were basically forced to do an open invitation to the church. However, we still also requested RSVPs. The wedding ended up being WAY too big though, and now that I'm getting remarried, we're going much smaller and simpler. Remember, the wedding is for YOU. Not for anyone else. So if someone's feelings get hurt, that's not on you. Think about who you want - and need - to be there. If a particular person or couple doesn't make that list, don't invite them.

Cecilia nailed it. The invitation is typically done as a bulletin notice and an announcement from the pulpit. In my experience there wasn't even cake & punch. In retrospect, I guess its tacky not to. But honestly, in this instance its probably the exception to the rule bc an open invite to the church could easily mean 400 guest (obviously depends on the church size). In any event generally, the members were ONLY invited to attend the ceremony. Individual guest invited to the reception (in an outside venue) received an actual formal invitation. No one is offended bc they understand the costs and space limitations involved with hosting a wedding.

For these types of reasons, FH and I decided to do the ceremony & reception at a venue. We are not and cannot invite our entire church for many reasons: (1) I have a big family so our guest list is literally about 120/160 just my family. (2) We are new at this church (about 2 years) so we don't have a close relationship with all the church members. Even though, they all expect/want an invite we cannot afford to host ppl just for the fun of it. We are inviting maybe 7-10ppl from church. Weddings are a private, intimate, and expensive event and it should be treated as such.