Wedding Night Do / Evening Guests

I can't speak for everyone but we are planning on giving a different favour to the evening guests, probably chocolates. We aren't having a gift list but if we were I wouldn't put it in the evening invitations. We are having our evening reception in a different room from the wedding breakfast so the tables won't be re-laid. Are you clearing your tables in the evening for dancing?

It really depends on your venue. At most places, evening guests don't get a place at a table; all the evening receptions I've been to are mostly just dancing, occasionally with a buffet to stand/sit around, but without allocated seating. At ours they cleared all the tables away after the wedding breakfast and just had benches down either side of the hall for the evening do.

You don't have to give them favours, and if there's no place setting there's nowhere obvious to put them, but if you have a special idea you'd like to give them then there's nothing stopping you.

Traditionally you would not send a gift list to evening guests, but we had quite a few ask us for ours, and a few more gave us various gift vouchers, so if you have something you specifically want you may want to think about asking them.

Sorry, this is all rather vague. There are no hard and fast rules, but I hope I've given you an idea of what is "usual," which you can then play with.

I am not giving my evening guests favours but i might give them a piece of edding cake i haven't decided.

I think you would have to ask your venue re the tables as it depends on if the reception and evening do are in same room etc

I also don't know the procedure about guest lists to evening guests!

We're having similar numbers.

What we did is reduce the wb to just the meal, and move speeches and cake cutting to the evening celebrations which starts at 5.30pm for 6pm with the speeches, then cake cutting at 7.15 and first dance 7.30pm, buffet coming out at 8.30.

The venue are setting up all the tables for us, only four are required for the wb and six more for evening guests, all will be set up and have favours in their places - we're seating evening guests too as we have some large groups we wanted to keep together and if couples sit in the wrong places there aren't enough spaces for everyone to sit where they may want to.

The issue of gift lists in any part of the day is often controversial but ultimately it has to be your decision as you know how your guests will take it. We couldn't invite everyone to the wb as it would have added over £3000 to our overall costs which we couldn't stretch to. All our guests are invited to the ceremony at 1.30pm so non wb guests will only have about 2 hours at most to occupy themselves, which either in the New Forest or the hotel bar shouldn't be any difficulty, plus some are staying over so they can check in and rest etc.

Contrary to popular belief, a wb invite does not make someone a 'more important' guest than an evening only invite; most people these days recognise the costs involved in a wedding and that it's just impractical to have everyone along all day.

I'm sure others will be along soon to share different opinions...

We are using a different room for our evening do so a few of the tables will be moved through and the centrepieces laid again but not all tables and not all chairs.

We aren't giving favours to evening guests but I may do if I were having those numbers.

I wouldn't put gift information on the evening invites - I don't think it's generally the done thing.

Thank you for everyone's replies - much appreciated.

Our wb and night do are in the same room, I'm going to a wedding fair at our venue so I can ask about the tables etc... then.

We haven't budgeted for favours for night guests so I'm glad it's not really tradition to give them one.

And thanks for the heads up about the gift list too :-)

Thanks again, really appreciate it xx

Personal opinion of course but I say no to favours for evening guests, I will only be putting these out for the guests sitting for the wedding breakfast. Then the tables will depend on the venue and what they usually do. Ours will stay as they are. I wouldn't put a gift list in the evening invites either.

We didn't give evening guests favours but we had an open bar all day and night so didn't feel the need to give much more. Tables will be cleared and just have the centrepieces left on them ready for the evening do. It is YOUR choice to give evening guests your gift list but you may find on here people have very different opinions about doing so. I certainly don't take offence to being given a gift list as an evening guest- I welcome them as otherwise I never know what to buy). We spoke with our evening guests if they asked what we would like as my H felt uncomfortable putting requests into their invitation (as he did with daytime guests too).

HTH