Should You Coordinate Pre and Post Wedding Activities for Your Guests?
Weddings often require many people to travel in order to attend the ceremony. Most people’s family and friends don’t all live within a 50-mile radius of each other, meaning most guests will have to book travel and take time off work to come celebrate.
While common in the luxury wedding space, pre and post wedding activities seem to not make the cut when most couples are planning their wedding. While the wedding ceremony and reception are the priorities for your budget, it’s also important to remember that people don’t arrive to town an hour before your ceremony begins and head back to the airport right after the reception. If most of your guests have traveled from out of town to attend your event, consider organizing some structured activities before and after the main event. Here’s why:
People are bored. You may be running around to appointments and coordinating last minute details, but your guests that arrived on Thursday afternoon for your Saturday wedding don’t have anything to do. Yes, we’re all adults and can fend for ourselves, but the point of a wedding is to bring people together. Especially if you’re getting married in a town with not much going on, schedule some optional activities so that guests don’t have to sit in their hotel watching TV or browse Yelp for two hours trying to figure out where to eat. Simply having a bar listed on the itinerary for Friday night where everyone pays for their own drinks is better than nothing. The people who came alone can mingle without feeling uncomfortable and the people who aren’t interested can skip it.
Make people feel welcome. When people show up to a wedding, they likely won’t have much of an opportunity to socialize with the other guests. Seats are assigned and let’s be honest, weddings are kind of cliquey. If you have guests in attendance who aren’t close family or aren’t part of the wedding party, they may feel a little out of place. A welcome activity is a great way for everyone to meet each other in a more casual setting. It also gives people a chance to spend some time with you without the chaos and production of your actual wedding day. Weddings are family-centric by nature and your wedding day will cater heavily to these guests. If you’re inviting coworkers, old friends, or distant relatives, a welcome activity gives you a chance to chat with these guests so they still feel appreciated and included. Nothing’s worse than spending thousands of dollars to come celebrate someone and then feeling like they didn’t even notice that you were there.
Avoid awkwardness. For many people, the first time their families and friends are meeting is at their wedding. A casual welcome dinner or cocktail party can take the edge off. Your wedding day is already a lot to deal with. Coordinating your relatives meeting your friends, boss, or new in-laws on the day of your wedding is more stress that you don’t need. Your wedding is for you to enjoy yourself and celebrate, not make 25 formal introductions like you’re at a work conference.
These same principles apply to post-wedding activities. Hosting a casual brunch or backyard BBQ at someone’s house the next day is another way for guests to see you before they head back home. You can open your gifts, catch up with friends or family that you didn’t get to see the day before, and properly say goodbye and thank people for coming.
Pre and post wedding activities don’t necessarily have to be something you’re exclusively paying for either. We’ve seen wedding weekend itineraries with a free hike listed as an optional group activity. It’s just about bringing people together, so be creative. Remember, at your wedding, you’re not only the guest of honor, you’re also the host.
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