Civil wedding...need help with plan of day

anmhi02

Morning all,
Wonder if any of ye could give me idea/ideas here. We are planning to have a small civil ceremony in the autumn (70 max, immediate family and very close friends). We are planning on having a meal in the hotel post the ceremony with the 70 guests. Later inthe evening we are planning on inviting approx 150 to a buffet style reception in the same hotel. Now I suppose I should explain that the reason we are breaking it up is cause of the huge numbers of extended family on his side (aunts, uncles and cousins), hense the reason we are only having immediate family and very close friends to the main bit.

Now, my OH wants to have another mini reception ie top table, speeches, eating buffet, with the later guests and the first set of guests so as to include everyone. I can see his point but I think its nuts to have another mini reception.

Had anyone any idea or suggestions on how to do this?? I'm completely stumped :-( .

Thanks so much in advance for any help

flikflak

Do the whole thing later, invite the smaller number to the ceremony then you and those guests can meet the other guests at the hotel and have your buffet all together as the meal after the wedding. The speeches and all that can be done with everyone there but you could explain that due to space restrictions there will only be a small number at the ceremony.

Either that or just be ruthless and keep your guest list at 70 for the whole day, or if you do invite more people to the later part then they will have to accept that they are only there for the evening part and will not be in the room for the speeches. Those People invited to the afters only are usually not expecting there to be any type of formality and know they are there for a drink, a sandwich and a dance and nothing more.

jlm29

Ye could do it as originally intended, except maybe have a drinks reception later, for the evening guests, and leave the cutting of the cake and the speeches to the evening, to include everything. Having two sets of speeches will be a bit dull for the people who are there all day!

Moonbeam

Would you keep all the tables out for theevening guests or put them out again or have them set up as they would be for the band?

anmhi02

Thanks all for your help. In regards to leaving out all the chairs, my only concern there is that the room would look really empty while having the first meal with all the extra empty chairs. Leaving the speeches till later sounds like a really good idea. But what do you think we should do with the first set of guests in regard to having no speeches with them??

jlm29

anmhi02 wrote: »

Thanks all for your help. In regards to leaving out all the chairs, my only concern there is that the room would look really empty while having the first meal with all the extra empty chairs. Leaving the speeches till later sounds like a really good idea. But what do you think we should do with the first set of guests in regard to having no speeches with them??

Sure they'd be there for the evening speeches anyhow. They probably won't take a bit of notice.

Philope

Just buffet the whole lot of them ?

Nicman

I think that wounds like madness and hard work. I think if you're inviting a smaller number for the "special part" of the day then surely it would be nicer and mroe intimate to keep the speeches for then. I assume anyone coming later in the evening are people who aren't that close to you both? If that's the case they really won't give a toss about speeches and it amy seem weird that you left it til then. Alot of people,regardless of costs, prefer to have a more intimate first part of the day and party later on with more guests which is great and becoming more and more commonplace, but I think holding off on some things that should really happen earlier looks cheap to me - that you wanted everyone there but couldn't afford it? Don't mean that in a bad way - as I said regardless of money id prefer to have it exactly how yer doing it that the full number for the full day. My sister did similar to what you're doing, had about 30-40 for the ceremony and meal, did the specches then and it was lovely. Then people started arriving in a larger room out the back around 8pm and they were propbably so happy to not have to come to the full day that they just wanted to kick back and have a good time - they arrived in party mode and the music was already going - would have been weird if she stopped all that great buz to do speeches that the larger group really doesnt care about I think. Everyone had a gerat time and were talking about it for months after - how relaxed it was and nice for a change.