At-home reception/party before the wedding

[Nichole33]

We are getting married in late October and plan on having a party of some sort in Michigan over 4th of July weekend. Our actual wedding is mainly family and our wedding party, so we want to invite all our family friends to the party. Since it is before our wedding do we call it a "reception" or something else?

Has anyone done this? If so, what wording do you use for the invites?

I really don't want to wait until after the wedding since the weather starts gets bad in northern Michigan in November and 4th of July is my favorite holiday back home. But I don't want to offend anyone by inviting them to the party and not to the wedding.

 

[PartofDisney'sWorld]

We are getting married in late October and plan on having a party of some sort in Michigan over 4th of July weekend. Our actual wedding is mainly family and our wedding party, so we want to invite all our family friends to the party. Since it is before our wedding do we call it a "reception" or something else?

Has anyone done this? If so, what wording do you use for the invites?

I really don't want to wait until after the wedding since the weather starts gets bad in northern Michigan in November and 4th of July is my favorite holiday back home. But I don't want to offend anyone by inviting them to the party and not to the wedding.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is it would be called an engagement party, since it's before the wedding. But if you really want to call it the reception, why not? Will you be wearing your dress and all that? Or you could call it a pre-wedding-reception, or something like that, and just let people know that since you are having a destination wedding you would like to celebrate with a party before the weather gets nasty. HTH.

 

[Nichole33]

I'm not planning on wearing my wedding dress - maybe a nice white summer dress though. We have been engaged since May 2010, so I didn't want to call it an engagement party. I like the idea of calling it a pre-wedding reception. I was thinking of doing something pretty informal at my parents house.

 

[CMK16Peace]

I'm doing a similar thing but after our Disney Fairytale Wedding on October 9th! We're having our cocktail reception for our friends back at home in Massachusetts on November 5th. Basically, we're planning two weddings! I'll be wearing a short white dress to the second one. Also, we're getting 2 completely different sets of invitations (they may look the same, but we're placing 2 separate orders). I have a feeling that I'm going to be leaving the cocktail reception in the hands of my mother for most of the time!

It's good to hear that someone else is doing something similar!

 

[princesswendy720]

Could you call it your bridal shower? Or wedding shower to make it for the both of you? Or, you could call it your send-off party? Or "Almost Married" celebration? I think you probably should shy away from having "reception" in it, just because it's associated with celebrating a wedding that has already happened. Or, you could avoid labeling it altogether and just put a longer description on the invite, along the lines of "join us to wish the nearly-weds the best as they prepare to go to Disney for their happily ever after."

 

[*Nessa*]

We did this, we didn't originally plan it this way but that’s what ended up happening for lots of reasons. We called it our home reception as we knew how much our extended family/friends wanted to be a part of our wedding celebration and we didn’t want to do it after we returned home. Most of our guests knew we were having a DFTW so they understood but for a few that didn’t know we included a note that explained we were getting married o/s and we wanted the opportunity to celebrate with all our family/friends back home hence the home reception.

 

[Nichole33]

We are planning on sending out separate invitations to the party. I'm thinking about wording like this:

As they get ready for their fairy tale wedding
they would like a chance to share their joy
with the people who would be with them
if they married at home.

So come join us for a celebration and shower in honor of

Nichole and Dustin

on Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 2 P.M.

at ...

Please R.S.V.P to:
...​

I think everyone will understand that they are not invited to the actual wedding, but we still want to celebrate with them. The more I look into it, the more I think it isn't proper to call it a "reception" before the wedding.