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I don't know. I keep going back and forth. We are probably going to have less than 100 guests. I think it's more personal to try and visit everyone at the reception but I'm afraid I won't have enough time to visit with everyone. Sorry no advice, I'm sitll on the fence on this.
I'm with TessaBella in that I am going back and forth on this too since the reception is in the same location and same room as the ceremony. I would have no idea where to start with something like this.
we are having a receiving/picture line. we are going to have a photbooth & a fauxtobooth. so, right now, i am thinking the mr. & i will be stationed at the fauxtobooth & all the guests will be directed to take a pic with us. brides & grooms (typically) use the cocktail hour to take their pics (while their guests are at cocktail hour), but we will do our pics pre-ceremony. we figured this was a great way to receive our guests & get a pic with them.
for the dinner, i read that a couple had two extra place settings at each table & they spent 7.5 minutes at each table "having dinner" with the guests. they just brought whatever dish they were eating at the time. i thought that was a neat idea and am considering it.
we are having 200 guests, btw. whatever you decide, it's your wedding. don't feel pressured into doing something you're not comfortable with. most people are pretty understanding about the bride & groom being busy. as long as you make everyone feel welcome somehow, i'm sure everyone will have a great time anyway.
I was originally thinking we would do table visits too, but with 200-250 guests I'm worried we'll miss people. I think having a receiving line will give us more of an opportunity to thank as many people as possible.
We're doing it... my friend who got married last summer said it was stressful to keep track of trying to visit with everyone, it kept her away from dinner and dancing, and she wished she had done a receiving line. So that pretty much sold me, although I have fewer guests than her (180 v. 220).
My friend who works as a wedding planner suggested that you "rehearse" the receiving line... line up your receiving line, then have WP members who aren't in the receiving line pretend to be chatty guests. Do the math, and know how much time you have per person (30 minute receiving line for 180 guests = 10 seconds per person), and practice having the next person in the line "pull" the guest away from you... or you'll be there for 2 hours!
We're not doing a receiving line, but we are planning to make our way to all the tables. Not sure if that will actually work out because I am fairly insistent that I get to eat!
We're planning on taking all pictures pre-ceremony. After the ceremony, we're going to make our getaway to the reception, so that we're there to "receive" guests. I'd much rather spend the cocktail hour visiting with my guests than having a drawn out receiving line at the church or missing out my meal. After a long day, my body will need the fuel to dance!!
We didn't really intend too and hadn't really decided either way but it just sort of happened. Oh well, its wasn't too bad. We stood at the dorrway to the church and anyone who wanted to stop could and if they didn't want to it was no big deal.
yep, my fiance is british so he's stickler fo rhis traditions, luckily we only have 59 guests; I briefed my mom just hi hello no lingering, gotta move it chop chop!
Ladybuglove I think that the photo receiving line idea is the greatest idea.
I am also in the same position because I don't want to take formal family shots right after the ceremony - mainly because I want to enjoy the excitement etc. and most likely I will have cried ... and I rather just leave directly after the ceremony ends.
I know my groom and I will have pictures together pre-ceremony. Our ceremony lasts 35 minutes it's at a Catholic Church with no mass and there is actually a mass that begins at 7pm ... right after our ceremony. Plus, fiance has a huge family and I just know they will all want their pictures taken with us. I am not against my siblings + mom + dad or his siblings + his dad and mom taking a picture with us at the church if that's really what they cannot live without, but I will not stand around waiting for each and every aunt + uncle + cousin and extended family member to take a formal shot with us. NO THANK YOU!
You resolution sounds PERFECT!!!! Ok. I will present this idea to my wedding planner, photographer and fiance.
Thank you.
We are having about 150 guests, I think we will be stopping by each table at some point, I just don't like receiving lines. It may take a little longer, but we are both ok with that and our friends and family will be understanding if we have to cut our visits short.
We're doing a receiving-line-slash-Презентація (Ukrainian for "presentation", a type of receiving line where the guests give their cards and monetary donations to the bridegroom).
mshymanroth: you're welcome! we are having a catholic wedding (with mass) and will be doing pics with immediate family after the ceremony for about 15 minutes. not to be all bridezilla, but i'm going to do a run through of the pics at rehearsal to be sure that's all the time we take. our guests will stick around and we will make our exit to be the first to arrive at the reception site.
i know all of our aunts, cousins, uncles, extended family, etc. will want pics, so the picture/receiving line was a way to solve that. my family loves pics.........FI's notsomuch....lol. again, not to be all bridezilla, but i will have someone there to direct everyone so that noone lingers for too long. we are having a super long reception, so i'm sure i will have met with everyone at some point.....hopefully:-)
No receiving line for us! Our ceremony and reception will be at the same location so our guests will just go inside for happy hour/snacks while we snap some quick photos. We are having approx 150 come so seeing everyone will be tight, but we're planning to make it work. The folks that will be there are people that we love, so seeing them will be a priority.
Also, I'm relieved there's no receiving line because I wouldn't know who to include without seriously offending people. FI's family is fine. But I'm sooo much closer to my stepdad than my father (in fact, we're not speaking currently) and I find my father's fiance slippery and conniving so I wouldn't want her up there either. Another "traditional" thing bites the dust... (for us at least)
Nope, no receiving line for us. We were pretty adament on that. We're expecting about 100 people, and we timed photos just right so that we'll be attending the majority of cocktail hour, so we'll be mingling with guests there, as well as the reception. I just asked that our photographer come an hour earlier than she normally does to take most of the pictures ahead of time so that we could attend cocktail hour. Right after the ceremony, we'll be taking pictures with non-wedding party people like grandparents (photographer estimates 10-15 mins) and then we're off for booze hour!
I am leaning towards a receiving line because we're having anywhere between 100-200 people and I just don't want to be running from table to table greeting everyone. One of my friends had their receiving line during the cocktail hour and that worked out well, so we are thinking of doing the same. That way the rest of the night, we will be able to sit down and enjoy dinner and we will have already greeted everyone.
Btw, love ladybugglove's idea of having it by the photobooth so that is probably what we will do!
i hate receiving lines. i think they are boring for all involved. i don't think it is a problem not to have one. i recently went to a wedding with over 500 guests and no line! just really make an effort to mingle.
We're having one. My sister's one and only "she would pester me to change my plans she feels so strongly about it" wedding advice was to have a receiving line. Think about it. If you have 175 guests, that's about 18 tables. If you go table to table, you can't get away with less than 5 minutes per table....so you've lost 1.5 hours of your reception. In a receiving line people will move quickly so it'll be more like a couple seconds per person (her 300 person line took less than 45 min). Then you can spend your ceremony with whomever you want, and all the guests still feel like they've had a chance to congratulate you.
We aren't having a receiving line, but right after we walk down the aisle after the introduction of MR & MRS we are walking right back in and then starting at the front of the chuch and go row by row and greet our guests as they are leaving their row. That way there won't be so much congestion and guest get to stay seated until it is their turn!!!
we're having one at the church right after the ceremony - I didn't want to feel like we HAD to get around to everyone at the reception. I'm hoping to spend most of our time after dinner on the dance floor! We are hoping to be at our whole cocktail hour too though, and plan to mingle then as much as we can so we can say more than a few words.
I am not a fan of recieving lines, but due to the amount of people we were expecting and our timeline, we opted for a different version. We took all of our traditional/formal pictures before the ceremony. After the ceremony, we were presented and exited, followed by the bridal party. The minister made an announcement for everyone to remain seated until dismissed by the bride and groom, as we wanted a chance to personally thank everyone for coming (and not all could stay for our receptions). We came back in and, starting in the front, dismissed everyone while our string quartet played on. During this time, the groomsmen and ushers went to the reception hall (in the same building) to light candles and the bridesmaids stood in the foyer to direct people to the cake reception. We loved the way this turned out, as it allowed us to control the flow and kept things moving while still greeting/thanking everyone.
A friend of mine and her husband dismissed the guests themselves, and it was a great way for them to see everyone, and relax for the rest of the day. As a guest, it was nice not to have to shake hands with an entire bridal party or people I didn't know, and for the happy couple, it keeps people from trying to talk to you for 5 minutes or more. Short, sweet, and done. You can always go back and spend more time with others, but the obligation is done, and you'll have seen everyone that came to the wedding, as some may need to leave the reception early.
The only thing I'd suggest is providing something for a big wedding, is to have something in the program to do (like a couple's crossword) or those photo montages set to music of them growing up in the front.
Like some of the previous posters, we'll be dismissing the rows after the ceremony. This works better for the layout of the church and my pastor also recommended it. I hope guests don't get too antsy in their seats. We chose some nice postlude music, so hopefully people will just sit back and enjoy the pianist.
HOw about an exiting line? I'm planning to do that toward the end of the reception as oppose to a "getaway". I personally prefer not to let me guests wait in a huge line between ceremony and reception. Another alternative is to seat at every table, each for like 10-15 min throughout the recpetion as to rotate through all tables. I personally wouldn't want to do that because I'm lazy.
We decided not to do a receiving line, but did something that my husband suggested. After our recessional, we asked our guests to remain in their seats and we went back in to dismiss them. We had 84 guests, so it wasn't a huge number. However, I would definitely not recommend this. I felt really rushed to get through everyone so that they could get up to the reception and we could get in to sign our marriage license. We were able to go around to all the tables at the reception, so I wish we had just done that.
When/ where do you DO the receiving line???????
Seriously, I've attended only two weddings in my life and I don't remember anything except for the cookie favor from one of them! Lol. So I am clueless.
Where and when depends a lot on your set up. We're planning to do our receiving line as guests enter the reception hall from the cocktail hour. That way, those people can hang back and continue drinking/hors d'oevres so hopefully there will never be a long line of people trying to enter the reception hall. I've been a guest where this happened more than once, and it was never a big issue (no long line to wait around in).
I personally don't like exit lines b/c people are trapped at the ceremony location with nothing to do. A friend of mine kept saying she didn't want a receiving line, but then somehow they decided it at the last minute. But b/c it was unplanned it sort of became an exit line as people were trying to funnel into the reception hall...the guests were completely trapped. Especially b/c they ended up forming a line along the narrow pier that led out to the dock where they held their ceremony. I was a BM and I tried to figure out a way to redirect it, but it was too late by then (300+ guests). Do not let this happen to you. If you do a receiving line, plan ahead!
I'm on the fence about this as well.
We are having less than 100 people so I feel it may not be needed...
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Could use some advice or ideas...Are you having a recieving line after your ceremony to greet all the guests? I wasn't planning on doing one (too time consuming, not really into traditional wedding stuff like that) but I was planning on going around to all the tables to say hi and chat, etc...However, I read in MS Weddings that if the wedding is over 100 people, then you should have a recieving line since it will be too hard to get to everyone...We're probably having between 150-175 guests...What are you doing? Any creative alternatives to the traditional recieving line?