At home reception invites questions

[vfinder1]

We are having a Disney Wedding with about 40 or less guests. We are having a at home reception after the wedding.

First question, when has everyone had their at home reception? When is it too late from your wedding date to have a reception? I would really like to wait for my pictures and video to be back but my parents think that is too long after the wedding to have the reception.

Second question, how do you invite your guests to your reception at home? Do you send a wedding invite or what kind of invite?
What exactly do you say in your invite? I just think some people will be mad that they didnt get invited but since we are only having a small wedding we cant invite everyone.

thanks

 

[lurkyloo]

First question, when has everyone had their at home reception? When is it too late from your wedding date to have a reception?

We had ours about 2 months after we got back from our honeymoon so that our pictures and video would be ready. However, I have heard of people having them as many as six months later. I dunno, I think anything within a year is fine. Plus, if it's a big-deal affair with cake and dancing and stuff, you're going to want a break after the wedding before you start planning it!

Second question, how do you invite your guests to your reception at home? Do you send a wedding invite or what kind of invite? What exactly do you say in your invite?

We sent a combination wedding announcement and invite to the at-home reception. I think most people who got these but not an invite to the wedding were relieved that they didn't have to fly all the way to Florida for the wedding.

Our at-home reception invite looked exactly like our wedding invite (which save some money on letterpress plates!) but with different wording and the opposite color scheme:

 

[Disney Ontario]

Hi. We were wandering the same thing. DD is having a Disney cruise wedding Feb. 2010. We were thinking the next weekend, but I guess we can wait longer.

 

[DisneyBrideToni]

I am getting married in Disney on February 2nd and having our home reception on March 28th.

 

[MistressOfAllEvil]

From all of the etiquette that I've read, you can have a reception up to a year later. We had ours 6 months after the wedding, but if it were up to me, it would have been sooner.

*Edit* Also, the closer it is to the wedding, the more natural it is to have more traditional reception elements. We were six months out, so we really didn't make it out like a reception. I refered to it as the party. I just felt like it had been too long to call it a reception.

While most of the information I've found says you would just send an invitation for a reception, I WANTED to do like Lurkyloo and send an announcement/std combo right after the wedding (in february) to bridge the gap between the wedding and the at home reception (originally scheduled for June). My MIL was the biggest PITA ever and I never got to send announcement/std's. And we ended up pushing the reception back to August. So we just sent invitations. The wording was rather simple... his parents invite you to join in celebrating the recent marriage of their son Chuck the Pimp to the Evil DIL Bridezilla. (I'm fudging it a little, but you get the point.)

 

[JandJ]

Our original plan was to have an at-home reception 6 weeks after the wedding. The invitations were a combination announcement/invite and went something like:

(Jen's parents) and (Jon's parents)
are proud to announce the happy news that
Jen and Jon were married in a small ceremony
on October 20, 2005 at Walt Disney World
Please join us for a celebration of their marriage
on December 3, 2005 at
(name and address of country club hall)

Also included were RSVP cards so we knew how many people to plan for. It was kind of misleading because it was an inviation basically from our parents, but we were paying for and hosting the reception. (We canceled when my mom passed unexpectedly). It was going to be huge because there were 132 people just from my side!

We ended up sending marriage announcements that we made, instead, and a friend mailed them the day after the wedding.

 

[vfinder1]

Bump

 

[Disneyaddict1973]

We had ours about 2 months after we got back from our honeymoon so that our pictures and video would be ready. However, I have heard of people having them as many as six months later. I dunno, I think anything within a year is fine. Plus, if it's a big-deal affair with cake and dancing and stuff, you're going to want a break after the wedding before you start planning it!



We sent a combination wedding announcement and invite to the at-home reception. I think most people who got these but not an invite to the wedding were relieved that they didn't have to fly all the way to Florida for the wedding.

Our at-home reception invite looked exactly like our wedding invite (which save some money on letterpress plates!) but with different wording and the opposite color scheme:

What a great idea! An open house reception would have been so great for us, since we planned our reception at our home. Would have been alot easier on us to have floating guests rather than a crowd of 50 at once!

 

[figmentfan814]

We did our reception 3 months later because we wanted to have the video and pictures back to showcase for our guests. We set up a projector and had the video running in the background during dinner and I was shocked, but people actually watched it! We did a red carpet theme since we were showing the video and because we were engaged in a theater.
Front:

Here is the inside of the invitations:

RSVP card:

 

[Nicsnick]

vanessa, I Love your at home invitations!! Too Cute!!

My wedding is on 3/23 and our reception in Houston is on 6/26. We are also planning on also having a party in the park here in Portland in August!!

I say do what you feel is right. Noone is going to say no to a good party (unless they have previous engagements!!!)