How to announce/invite to a beach wedding? (sort of long)

[sydneycasandra]

Here''s my dilemma-

We are both poor students, and have decided to get married at a lovely resort in the caribbean and have our honeymoon there as well. We were officially engaged in August; the papers in our hometowns carried the announcement November-ish. Most of our family and friends know we are getting married but don''t know too many of the details; when, where, etc. My mom is coming and bringing a friend or a date, not sure which; a friend of my df''s is coming (not his best friend but just needed a vacation so decided to come to our wedding, which is cool with me.) Other than that, no one is coming; I would like more people to come but unfortunately I cannot pay for trips for any of my friends as would be traditional; I have informally invited them all through e-mail, phone, etc., but am wondering what we should do about official wedding announcements.

Do we send out invitations? I don''t think anyone would actually come, but I don''t want to offend anyone.

Or do we send out a post-wedding announcement? I don''t know for sure, but I think my mom may be hosting us a reception when we return so that all of our friends and family can come. I am planning to wear my wedding dress to this (it''s very informal, and of course, no veil)- is that tacky? I think that it would be fun because I know that the women at least will want to have seen me in it. How will the post-wedding announcements coincide with the reception invitations. What if there isn''t a reception?

I feel like my wedding (In MAY!) is about to pass by many of my closest friends and family members; I don''t care about anyone sending gifts, but I want them to know about the wedding and hopefully celebrate with us on our return. I also don''t want to make the wrong move with the invitations/announccements and come off as either tacky, inconsiderate (inviting people who obviously can''t come to a wedding out of the country), or whatever. I''M SO CONFUSED-HELP!

Thanks!

 

[selflove]

It''s a complex set of events happening...especially since you don''t know about the reception. Your options are:

1) Send invite with Caribbean wedding info only now and then send the reception invite when you know about it
2) Send invite with Car. info + reception info...but then you will have to wait until your mom confirms the reception, losing valuable time since your destination wedding is approx. 3 mos. away
3) Send no invites

Is that right, those are your options? If so, I''d choose option #1 b/c if you seriously want anyone to come, they need time to plan the trip. If you wait until your mom decides about the reception, it may be too late for some friends and family to get the time off of work, get reasonable airfare, etc.

Good luck! I understand being in invitation hell--I''m in myself right now. Still don''t have our''s for our May wedding.

 

[qtiekiki]

I would send formal invitations to the Carribean wedding, even though you already inform your friends and family through emails, phone, etc. You can really expect people to attend unless you have formally invited them, and it''s not traditionally required of the bride and groom to pay for their guests to attend their destination wedding. Since it''s only 3 mos away, you should send out invitations asap to allow ample time for guests to make travel plan.

I would send out a wedding announcement but not an invite to a reception unless you are sure that your mom is throwing one. If you end up not having one, then it would be weird and you would have to explain to people why you are not having. If your mom decides and confirms on the reception before the wedding, then I would send an invite to the reception but not the announcement since it may be redundant. If the reception is not comfirmed by the wedding, then do the wedding announcement right after the wedding and send invite to the reception when it''s confirmed. IMHO, I think you should probably figure out the reception soon, so you don''t end up spending extra money on announcements and invites. And it''ll be less stressful to have everything confirmed. It''s not tacky to wear your wedding dress again to the reception. I think it would be very nice for your family and friends who can''t make it to the wedding to see you in your wedding dress.

 

[sydneycasandra]

So I should-

1) send invites to the wedding but no mention of the reception (need to get on this!)
2) wait until right after the wedding to send reception invites (maybe if we determine we are having the reception before the wedding, and have them printed and ready to go?)

perhaps I should try to find out about a reception now, and if we are having one, go ahead and send out wedding invitations that also include reception information so people are aware of it.

 

[Tybee]

HI SydneyCassandra,

First, I have to apologize because I am a notorious scimmer of long messages. I probably should go back and reread yours, but I am also have a wedding in the Caribbean, and actually am SURPRISED at the number of people who are planning on coming.

My advice to you (if this is what you are asking, and if this helps) is to actually send out the invitations. People will come if they can, but also people will be delighted to know that they are invited, whether or not they can actually come. If you are not yet sure about the at-home-reception, then don't mention it at all, you can send out a separate invitation for that when you know for sure.

When we chose our location, etc, we sent out a very informal save-the-date via e-mail. In it we clearly stated that although we would love it if everyone could actually come to our wedding, we understood the difficulties in travelling so far, etc.

Our wedding is in July. We are getting ready to send out our actual paper invitation in March.

Hope this helps a bit. I'm actually going to go back and read your post now (lol!)

Tybee

I'm editing my reply in a post script to add:
It seems to me that you haven't invited people because you cannot afford to pay for their airfare. Let me add that we most certainly are not paying the airfare or accomodations for our guests. I wish that we were that rich! Again, I'm surprised at how many friends and family are actually planning on attending!
Good luck! Let us know what happens

 

[sydneycasandra]

For anyone reading-

I''ve taken some of the advice here. I finally talked to my mom and asked her if we were going to hold a reception when we returned... she said she hadn''t thought I would want one (why, I have NO idea) and that sure we could have one. We set the date, time, and location within about 3 minutes!

The invitations will read something like:

Announcing the wedding of
miss x
and mr y
to be held in sometown, caribbean
at joe''s super great resort
on may twenty-second, two-thousand six


you are invited to attend a reception
which will be held at the home of the bride''s mother
at 1234 sycamore street in jonestown, xx
on june 9th, two thousand and six
at two o''clock in the afternoon

and then include response cards for people to say whether or not they''re coming

we''re going to order invitations sometime this week, have them hopefully sent out by the end of march (!) and ask for replies by may 1st.

Does that sound like a) a reasonable wording? and b) an okay timeline?

now i have to find invitations.. i want something colorful and modern, not the same ol'' embossed lilies (not that there is anything wrong with that, it''s just not my taste and the reception is going to be VERY informal). any thoughts on cheap-o invites? i spent an hour last night and the best i could find was $205 for 75 invites/envelopes/response cards w/ envelopes. Sounds high to me?

Thanks guys!