(Re-posting to this forum because I accidentally posted on the wrong one before.)
Our wedding will be at two locations: a church ceremony followed by a cocktail hour and reception at a venue about 7 minutes away. We will have 230 guests, which is the maximum limit our reception venue allows. We aren't doing a "Catholic gap" with hours of time between them; Once the ceremony concludes, people are free to make their way to the reception venue, where cocktail hour with appetizers will be available for them (but they don't have to rush of course, they can take their time).
The problem is that we are
anticipating a number (my fiance says 50) of uninvited guests for the
ceremony, because they will hear through word-of-mouth when the ceremony
is and want to come. This doesn't really bother me, I think it's a
compliment that people would want to come see the ceremony and wish us
well. It also doesn't cost us anything for uninvited people to come sit
in the church pews. We have friends who got married at the same church
and had this happen: quite a few people they hadn't seen in
years showed up to the ceremony unexpected (the couple also had a reception at a
different location).
The problem is that we can't hand out
programs at the ceremony with the full order of events on them, because
the uninvited people would see when and where the reception is, and that
seems rude/improper. But we also want to be sure we very clearly
communicate the location and time of the reception to all invited
guests. Of course the info will be on the invitations, but with two
locations we want to be sure we communicate very well what those locations are and the time of the cocktail hour after the ceremony. We will also have the order of events with locations on our wedding website.
I just feel a little strange about not handing out a printed order of events (with locations and times) at the ceremony, so that people don't need to pull up the website on their phones or something to remind themselves where they're supposed to go next.
Thoughts?
