Hi all,
I'd love some advice on my wedding reception idea. My fiancé and I both come from large Italian and Mexican families. We are recently engaged and are starting the wedding planning process. My family has owned a large restaurant in our town for over 35 years! Since growing up in the restaurant I've made so many close friends with our customers and have celebrated many achievements & life changes with them. All that being said we are looking at anywhere from 200-500 guests with everyone we know (like holy crap)
In order to not exclude anyone we were thinking of doing our wedding in two parts
Part One: our family and closest friends will be present at our ceremony, cocktail hour and sit down dinner
Part Two: after dinner we wanted to expand our venue and host an "after party." By this we basically mean everyone who we couldn't fit at our ceremony would be invited. There will be a huge food station as well as a bar but not a "sit down" formal dinner. There will dancing, photo station and just a great party atmosphere
I've seen a lot of people say either invite them to all of it or don't but due to the size of our guest list inviting everyone is extremely difficult. It isn't so much about cost rather having enough tables, chairs, cutlery for that many people. Our venue can hold a huge number of people but again for
We would NEVER invite people without properly feeding them nor do we want anyone to feel less important. All of our guests mean the world to us and I want to find a way to incorporate everyone. My fiancé and I did attending a wedding that did this and it was really fun!
I'd love everyones thoughts on this and any advice they may have.
Thank you