Hello!
We are planning a wedding and have booked our dream venue - an estate with a large banqueting hall for the wedding breakfast and eveningreception, pretty grounds for our photos, and a cute church on-site for the ceremony.
The only issue is that the church will only hold 80 guests and we have 120 day guests on our list that we really can’t reduce any further. 80 is too many guests for us to use the excuse of having an intimate ceremony, but we’re going to have to split day guests into ceremony and non-ceremony somehow, whilst being careful to not offend those friends/relatives who we cannot fit in the church (even though we will be paying for their meal afterwards ). We have a third group of reception guests who will be joining in the evening and we are happy with this guest list. Our options for the 120 day guests are:
1) Move to the ceremony to a (larger) local church which is near the venue but off site. All 120 guests can be involved in the ceremony but would then require travel to the venue for the breakfast and reception, and part of why we fell in love with the venue was the ability to have the whole day in different areas of the one site.
2) Ask some day guests to miss the ceremony but offer them a place to wait it out (ie the wedding breakfast hall or private terrace/bar area - or literally wait outside the church (service should be 30 mins or so). This means they can see the bridal party arrival and also get involved in the post ceremony receiving line. But is this rude asking them to be there but not participate in the ceremony? We can also consider live streaming if this helps dampen the blow.
3) Split the day guests so that the 80 ceremony guests are invited before the ceremony begins, and the remaining 40/50 who we cannot fit are given an arrival time of after the ceremony. Ie to arrive during the 90min drinks reception, before the wedding breakfast.
Wondering if anyone has thoughts on the above options or a new one :-)
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