Day vs Evening guests

I will be in the minority of this one but I just had day guests, no additional evening guests.

My thinking was that if you are important enough to me to be there at all, you're important enough to be there during the day. If you not important enough to me to be there during the day, what's have them at all?

Plus, we had half about 1/3 guests coming from abroad, and obviously you can't invite them to just an evening.

However, I was fortunate in that I had no restrictions on numbers. Our families aren't massive and we were lucky that of the total 125 we invited, we could afford to have them there during the day and there were no ceremony number restrictions. I was also strict with work people and invited only those I socialised with outside of work and felt that we had a real friendship

I understand that's not the case for everyone due to budgetary or venue number restrictions.

We knocked out a lot of venues on our epic venue search as there were so many with number restrictions on the ceremony bit.

I would not worry about atmosphere at all - as long as you have good DJ/band/music that's what changes the atmosphere

Do not feel compelled to have evening guests

We are just having 100 day guests. We talked about it and realised that we wanted everyone to be part of our day, 100%. I appreciate that there are lots of different reasons why people might have evening guests (budget, size of venue etc) but we're happy with our decision.

I've been to a couple of weddings where the evening guests turned up and the day was running late and it was all a bit awkward. Again, this is only personal experience and I don't think there's anything wrong with having evening guests, but definitely don't have them if you'll just be doing it because you think you should.

I feel like the venue that advised you to do that might have been angling for more money spend on evening food/the bar, but I might be wrong

We only had day guests, mainly because like the previous poster we felt that if someone was important enough to come to our wedding, they should actually see us get married. Also, all of our guests had to travel at least forty-five minutes and because we were getting married relatively late in the day (3.30pm), it seemed a bit far to ask people to travel for only a few hours.

Catering wise it wasn't too bad - we had just under 100 guest but because we'd fed them in the early evening we didn't need to provide a full buffet later on; just cheese, wedding cake, mulled wine and mince pies.

There was definitely no drop in the atmosphere (the dance floor was full from the end of dinner through to the end at 1am!) but then our later start meant shorter gaps between the various stages of the wedding, which might be something to consider.

I don't think you should feel pressured to invite people to your wedding just for the sake of it - it's one of the most important days of your life, do you really want to spend it with people who are 'casual acquaintances' rather than friends?

I always thought that we'd have everyone there for the day and no evening guests. I'd always believed in the "if you're important enough to us..." But alas, I didn't foresee having such a small budget for my wedding and it being very DIY, so we've really had to think about who we invite. We have 100 for the day with an extra 15 coming in the evening, the majority whom are OH's work colleagues (who wouldn't want to come for the whole day anyway - they're an odd bunch!) and the parents of one bm and the best man. You aren't alone in just having day guests though, wish we were able to.

We are just having 50 guests for the whole day, with no extra evening guests ;-)

I think the venue would only fit about another 10 guests in for the evening anyway and we are getting married over an hours drive away from all our friends and family anyway so would feel mean making someone travel all that way for just a few hours!

Ahh, thank you so much everyone, I was really concerned that it was a crazy idea! It has made me feel much better

We don't think it will have too much impact on the budget as our caterer is pretty cheap anyway, and we were thinking about having a later wedding so there is no need for an evening buffet, just wedding cake and a cheese cake with crackers, breads and chutneys.

I will just have to double check how many people the venue can seat comfortably and work out the extra cost for the chairs. Hooray for actually making some decisions at last!

We are having 40 day guests and then another 20 in the evening. If we could we would invite all 60 for the day but with the high prices the hotel are charging per head we just couldn't afford to do it.

X

We're having 70 day guests. Mainly family and close friends. Then an extra 100 in the evening! All our mates, work colleagues etc for a big party!

Theres a lot of factors I guess in deciding whether or not you need/want to have evening guests.

We are having our wedding back at my home in Aberdeenshire, however I have lived in Edinburgh and Oxford since leaving home. Apart from a few family members back at home, a couple of friends who still live at home and the neighbours who my mum wants to invite everyone else will have to travel for quite some distance. Everything from 3 to 8 hours travel time! Plus one to two nights in a hotel. We felt this was far too far to invite people only for an evening do so everyone will be there all day. We are lucky in that the max no of guests we can have is 90 and this pretty much covers everyone we want to invite.

I recently went to a wedding that didn't have any evening guests, didn't think this caused a lack of atmosphere or anything like that.

I think the majority of people have evening guests because they either can not afford to have everyone there all day or don't have space at their preferred venue.

If you have both I don't see why you need additional evening guests.

Day guests usually attend the ceremony and then the sit down meal with speeches.

Evening guests usually turn up at 7ish in the evening for the evening dancing, buffet and drinking!

But you can do what you want, it’s your day.