What do we do?

Personally, I would not invite some guests only to the dancing portion of the evening, as it could easily be seen as rude, and may offend your guests. The options I would consider are:
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1. Have a smaller intimate wedding, only inviting immediate family (parents, grandparents and siblings), and closest friends to attend. Then invite the rest of the extended family to watch the ceremony via live stream.
.2. Elope.3. As hard as it may be, cut the guest list down to what you can afford.4. Host an inexpensive, informal reception that would allow you to invite everyone

Definitely rude. Unless your church ceremony is truly private (immediate family only), it is considered rude to invite only some of the guests to both the ceremony and reception and the group to only the reception. I know it's hard (I married into a Mexican family, so truly, I know it's easier said than done), but I would honestly narrow down your guest list to only the people you can afford to host for both aspects of the wedding. Besides, you won't save much by inviting fewer to the ceremony as the reception is the more expensive part of the wedding.

First off it’s your wedding day so you can go whatever works best for you.
There are some people that will definitely be offended and find it rude.

An ‘off-the-wall idea’ lol, would be to have your wedding on a weekday. We are saving over $15,000 because we are doing this. This may allow you to invite more people that you can afford at a nice venue, and you may also find that people may not be able to attend because it’s on a weekday, so it may give you more room to invite more.
The final off-the-wall option would be to invite the closest nearest and dearest and invite the rest to attend your ceremony VIRTUALLY ONLY. I recently discovered an application today called Lovecast and because of Covid we have to do this for some of our guests.

View Quoted Comment Everyone is invited to the ceremony. The order is ceremony at the church, dinner, and then dance. I want to try to omit some from dinner and only attend the dance.

View Quoted Comment Everyone is invited to the ceremony. The order is ceremony at the church, dinner, and then dance. I want to try to omit some from dinner and only attend the dance.

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Eek. Yeah, that would definitely be a no-go as well. How would you decide who is "good enough" for both the dinner and dancing and who is "only good enough" for the dancing? (I know that's not the intention, but honestly how it comes across). I'm sure you're going to get differing opinions, however, if I were a guest that was invited to the ceremony and the dance without being invited to the dinner, I would be very offended. I would just cut the guest list to what you can afford and have a wonderful time with the people who are invited.

View Quoted Comment Yeah I know but to answer your initial question, yes, many may find it rude to not be invited to dinner. Which is why I suggested possible virtual ceremony for those that you cant invite to dinner that way those people don’t have to travel, clear their schedules, request time out of work, get an outfit, and get a gift if you can’t afford to provide them dinner. I also don’t think many venues would even allow 200+ extra people showing up just to dance at the end of the night, so I will definitely talk this over with your venue for sure before you send out any invitations or save the dates . As happy as I’m sure everyone will be for you, it’s quite a burden on people to attend weddings sometimes and then they would have to figure out how to kill three hours after your ceremony just to go back to dance

Its gona be rude because family will talk. And when one realizes they were invited to one part of the wedding but not the other, they are gona feel offended. This is really tough because family are the first ones to get petty & OFFENDED rather than be UNDERSTANDING. (My husband’s tia and tio were offended they were not invited to our 9person courthouse ceremony). Like 🤷🏽‍♀️ We were actually only allowed to have 5people with us. I thought some ppl were gona get kicked out but thankfully they left everyone stay for all 5minutes of our ceremony.


So in ur case theres no win win. U either invite them to all of ceremony + reception. Or u cut down ur guestlist. Either way with the description you gave ppl that are invited to one portion of the reception but not the other May get offended. And if you cut your guest list the family that doesn’t get invited at all may be offended also. Unless ur family is perfectly normal and understanding 😂 then it wont matter. U can do as u please.

This is incredibly rude. If you can’t afford to host all of your guests, don’t invite them. Definitely don’t just invite them to the part where you don’t have to spend any money on them.

Yikes, what you're proposing is a tiered wedding, and I can't think of anything ruder! Only invite the number of guests you're able to host. How do you think the people left out of the dinner portion would feel?

It would be rude to invite people to only the dancing portion. I could almost justify having them to only the reception (including dinner) but if they’re not invited to dinner definitely rude.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this. If I was a guest that was only invited to dance, I would see it as you don’t think I am important enough or good enough to attend the main event. Very rude and feelings will be hurt.


Host the wedding you can afford by either eloping or cutting your guest list to immediate family only (parents, grandparents, siblings).

View Quoted Comment Oh yeah that’s even more rude than inviting some to the ceremony and others to the reception. The point of the dinner ie reception is to thank your guests for celebrating your wedding with you. What you are proposing is that only a select few are worth your money to thank for celebrating you. Not cool. Only invite those you can afford to host fully. Guest list cuts are hard but necessary.

Some other ideas:

- Schedule events so the reception isn’t over a meal time and have a very simple reception, what I’ve seen referred to here as a ‘cake and punch reception’

- Make the hard choices, draw some really firm lines, and limit which relations you invite. Agree with your FH what ‘fair’ looks like in that scenario, e.g. if you decide to limit family to aunts/uncles, does your FH do the same, or does he invite the same number of family, or something different?

- Elope and then have a party with dancing, but not dinner, with everyone later.

That is rude. You cannot invite guests to only one part and not all. Cut the guest list, cut other things out such as favors, champagne, etc to be able to afford everyone equally

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This is called a tiered wedding and it is very rude.

It is extremely rude. You should only invite those that you can actually afford to properly host.

You could do a ceremony and then just a dessert reception, even having it a bit later in the day so that people have time to eat in between. The most expensive part of a wedding is usually the food/alcohol. If you did just dessert you could still include everyone, dance, etc. while saving a lot for money.