Member- applecat
- 4 years ago
- Wedding: November 2014
…I am hoping that if you did have a party (or if you did not but you just happen to be a very knowledgeable bee), you can help me out with a few questions!
Our wedding is roughly a 6pm-12AM affair, with our ceremony being at 6, cocktail hour from 6:30-7:30, and our reception beginning at 7:30 and ending between 11:30 and midnight. The ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception are all at the same venue (The Gem Theatre in Downtown Detroit). After the reception ends, we are planning on having a small afterglow (roughly 50 people out of our 200+ wedding guests) party.
My FI belongs to a very nice private leisure club in Downtown which happens to be located right next door to our venue (the Detroit Athletic Club, for those familiar with the area), so we would like to have it there. Said club contains a beautiful private bowling alley (FI and many of his friends are bowling enthusiasts) with an adjoining bar and restaurant. It is very nice and upscale (pictures here and here), so guests would not feel out of place in their formal wear.
We are planning on renting out the alley and adjoining bar/restaurant from 12AM-2AM, and we will be providing the open bowling, including ball, shoe, and lane rental. However, drinks from the bar will be cash. We are having a premium 5 hour open bar plus tons of food – including a late night snack – at our reception, so my thought is that guests should be able to have plenty to eat and drink. If they want to supplement it, then the cash bar is there for them to utilize.
Guests who don’t want to bowl or feel uncomfortable doing so in their dressy clothes can just enjoy the bar and mingling – as I said it’s a nice place with lots of other things to enjoy!
So here are my questions!
-I hear a lot about how having a cash bar at a wedding is tacky…and to a point, I tend to agree. Is it then also tacky to have one at an afterglow, after you have offered five whole hours of free booze? I have been to a few weddings where I was invited to attend a bar crawl afterward with a smaller group of guests and, naturally, I have always assumed I would be buying my own drinks after the conclusion of the reception (and I did).
-Only a portion of our guests will be invited to the afterglow, and mainly, they will be our friends and friends’ spouses. I don’t see this being a problem, as older family members will have no interest in partying until 2AM. What is the best way to invite said people to the afterglow? I am considering doing an instert in their invitation, but would word-of-mouth be a better idea? Or an e-mail invite?
-If we opt to do an insert in the invitation, what should the wording say?
-Did you have an afterglow or similar type party? Was it fun? Would you do it again?
Thanks for any advice or insight you can provide!! 🙂
