How to Invite Guests to an Encore Wedding Reception

It use to be pretty standard for a couple that was planning an encore wedding to have a small intimate gathering with only close friends and family. Today, couples can make their encore wedding as intimate or as elaborate as they desire and invite as many guests as they choose. If you are planning an encore wedding and not sure how to go about inviting guests to the reception, here are some things you might want to consider.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Wedding invitations

1. Announce your engagement to your family, and friends. This can be done at an engagement party that someone throws for you. If no one offers to throw an engagement party for you, host a party where you announce your engagement.
2. Decide how traditional and formal your encore wedding and reception will be. If you will be having a traditional or more formal wedding ceremony and reception, your invite list might be different than if you are having an informal encore wedding and reception.
3. Consider how big your wedding will be and how many guests you want to have to celebrate with you. Find out how many guests the reception venue can accommodate.
4. Collect guest lists from both sides of the family. This is just a wish list and it may turn out that not everyone will be invited.
5. Trim the guest list down by placing guests into categories based on how many people you want to invite, who is most important and who you think can actually attend. Keep in mind that the reception venue may only be able to accommodate a certain number of guests.
6. Send out invitations to your final list about eight weeks ahead of time. If you are not seeing the number of replies come back as yes that you thought you would, this will give you a few weeks to send out more invitations to your wedding reception.
7. Mail out announcements after your wedding to guests that were not able to attend or those that you could not invite.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are hosting your own party to announce your engagement, do not expect gifts.
• You can also announce your engagement in the paper, via email or on the phone.
• Keep in mind that weddings are expensive. The more people you invite to your reception, the greater the cost will be.
• Be cautious about inviting your ex-spouse or in-laws. This could make other guests uncomfortable.

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