Wording for optional church ceremony

Because it is largely frowned on in many social circles to skip a reception, I would not mention the church ceremony if you don’t want people to attend. If it is open, list both and let them decide. Are you not able to serve cake and coffee at minimum? You don’t have to serve a full dinner for everyone.

We're not really skipping the reception because that will be on Saturday, and everyone is invited to both Friday and Saturday. Friday night mass is an optional thing since not everyone wants to sit through an hour-long Catholic mass.

I'm confused by your events. You're having a Catholic wedding on Friday; then you're having *another* ceremony on Saturday? You'll already be married though?

I am also a bit confused and/or curious. Is there a particular reason, other than worrying non-VIP guests won’t want to sit through a Catholic ceremony, that there are two ceremonies being held on back-to-back days? Once you have the Catholic ceremony, you will officially be married. Despite being slightly longer in length, it is the one that will have all the raw emotions and the taking of the vows that make the ceremony so special. From a logistics standpoint, I’m also curious how this all works out, too, in terms of dress, wedding party, vendors, anniversary date, etc.

Yeah, it's weird. We definitely wanted the Catholic ceremony, but we also wanted the civil ceremony, and some friends who have gone through it recommended doing both - I guess it's surprisingly common. We wanted both for a lot of personal and family reasons, also because if you haven't sat through a Catholic ceremony, it's mostly (rightly) about God and much less about the couple. The couple barely has a role beyond saying I do. We wanted that, but we also wanted something much more personal and for us, which is why we're doing the civil ceremony as well and inviting everyone to both. Both will be special in their own ways and for their own reasons.


For dress, I'll have a simple one for church and another one for Saturday; the Saturday will be our anniversary, though we're not huge on particular dates for things anyway, and the majority of the planning and vendors will go into Saturday.

Anyway, any suggestions on wording?

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Hi! We're doing the exact same thing and I agree, it's not that uncommon!

I'm also trying to figure out wording for our invitations and wonder if you have any advice?

On our website we listed out all the events and did write a similar statement of optional religious ceremony for Friday.

The formal invite is where I'm having trouble. The front has our names, the date, and the venue address. I'm thinking of adding religious ceremony on Friday to the bottom.

On the back we have RSVP at our website url so I figure when they go there to do that they'll be able to see the full details and decide from there.

View Quoted Comment Nice! That's awesome!
With our invitation we included a formal invite and a details card. On the formal invite we just put the civil ceremony and reception, and then on the details card we listed the religious ceremony, the civil ceremony, and the reception. Under the religious ceremony we said: We would love to see you at all events, but if your schedule only allows you to attend one, we would prefer to see you on Saturday (or something like that). So far no one has had any issues with it and the wedding is coming up!
We also didn't ask people to RSVP for the religious ceremony, which I think made it more clear it was optional. But I think you can go either way with that. I just didn't feel like having to track one more event hah. Good luck with yours!