Thoughts on small ceremony/large reception

For our wedding we invited everyone to the ceremony and dance but limited the number invited to dinner. 90% of our guests will come from out of town so I felt bad leaving them out of the ceremony. I do have a cousin who recently got married though and the had a "Christmas morning ceremony" so only family who would be there Christmas morning (parents, grandparents and siblings) were invited and everyone else was invited to the reception. I loved this idea and nobody had any issues with it.

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Yuuppp! or just make sure to state no dinner will be served at the reception. so people know to eat ahead of time.

and I love Brittany's phrasing about "we wed privately, but join us for the reception"

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I agree with this!

I say to go for it! I'm actually hoping that not everybody shows up to our ceremony as we probably won't have enough seating and you may not be able to hear us if there is a strong wind

I do agree with Vinod about the food however. Even if the reception starts at 8pm, make sure that there won't be a shortage of food! And also don't forget about the midnight snack that is usually put out. Dancing + drinks = hungry!

Also, congrats on the engagement and welcome to the wedding wire community! Hope we can help you in planning the big day!

Honestly I’m a huge supporter of this! In England it’s very common to have like an after party with everyone. Weddings get super expensive when you invite everyone, so doing a seperate sort of event with everyone makes such a big difference! Go for it by all means, because it’s a really nice way to share your day!

You have the idea of what Indian weddings would be and having seperate invititations to guests for the evening rather than wedding.

Invite those guests to the reception only apart from family and close friends. H'ouvres mau not be enough to feed everyone while drinking. Buffet can help by cutting cost over plated and the guests fed.

If it's going to be one or the other (going to just the ceremony or just the reception), people would most rather just go to the reception. I think it's 100% okay to ask people just to join you for the party.

You can have an invitation for the reception, phrased kind of cute, "Kayla and [FH] will privately wed, but would love to have you at their wedding reception..."

I've seen more crude ones like "You are NOT invited to our wedding... But we'd love to see you at our reception"... haha. Not so good, but you get the idea, you can find ways to nicely say you had a very small private ceremony, but you'd love people to join you to celebrate.

I think this is a wonderful idea... and you're right, it is your day. I think most people would rather skip the ceremony anyway tbh, unless they are close family.