Separate Ceremony and Reception?

It would be terrible etiquette, and bound to hurt a LOT of feelings! People will be having casual conversations and the reception topic will come up...and then you will have offended many. =( I say go with a different venue.

My cousin is doing this next year for her wedding. I can honestly tell you it is going to make a lot of people angry! A lot of the people going to her wedding are traveling family and she is not inviting the majority of the family to the reception only her friends. I don't know if I would go if I didn't make the cut and I feel some of our family feels the same about it especially since we will be traveling 8+ hours to Green Bay for the wedding.

Thank for the advice! My problem then is finding a vendor in this area which will seat more than 150 people or taking a machete to my guest list. My wedding will be in Tennessee, in August, and it's HOT. My dad is all about finding a place that has air-conditioning. I've looked into every vendor within an hour of where I live (Monterey, TN), and any place that seats more than 150 is under a tent or pavilion outside... so my only other option is the church gym...which looks like...a gym. So is it better to chop down the guest list? I don't want people to feel offended... I teach at a boarding school and we're all like family, so a small guest list is difficult...

The format you are suggesting is very traditional, advised in most etiquette manuals up until maybe twenty years ago and broadly practiced, so its propriety is well-recognized among us who remember weddings from a decade or two past. But your first problem will be those of your guests who are NOT traditional -- probably the majority of your friends in your own age-group. It doesn't matter whether it's proper or not, if it hurts people's feelings.

Of course, the flip side is, that you know your friends and can judge whether they would prefer to come to your ceremony and public reception to being overlooked completely, or whether they would feel entitled to both invitations and take offence at getting only one. Because you will read both opinions here and on other boards: different people have different expectations and different senses of entitlement. Note that traditionally ceremony-only invites imply you do NOT welcome gifts from those people -- but they might not know that.

I would recommend that you find a venue that will seat the amount of guest you need.

Your second problem will be that, even if your friends do prefer an invitation to the ceremony and refreshments, following this tradition does not mean you have carte blanche to do whatever you want in terms of hosting. You still need to greet all the guests coming in to your after-ceremony refreshments hour (which, incidentally, *is* a "reception" since you will be "receiving" the ceremony attendees to thank them for their support), and you need to spend enough time at the after-ceremony reception to have a chance to talk to all your guests.

Finally, the "wedding breakfast" (meaning the meal at which you and your husband first "break your fast" as husband and wife, even if it is lunch or dinner) is properly an intimate affair. You cannot invite your friends and leave out your grandmother. You cannot ask 200 to attend your ceremony, and then invite 150 guests to the wedding breakfast and leave out 50. More appropriate would be to ask 200 to the ceremony, and have 25 - 50 to dinner.

Small ceremony (Family and close friends).. then separate venue for reception (EVERYBODY'S invited). That way.. wedding etiquette isn't broken.