Wedding Reception Planning
What are the things you’ll need to consider or think of when planning your wedding reception? Here are the items that you will have to give serious thought to:1. The Place: Where would you want to have your reception? Do you prefer to have the party at a hotel, a restaurant, a garden, or a beach? Bear in mind that it is always simpler to choose a venue which is covered. Having your wedding reception in open air (like in a garden) requires greater planning and will necessitate having a back-up plan just in case it rains unexpectedly.
It is always best to choose a place for the reception that is near the church or the place where the actual wedding ceremony or proceedings will be held. Having your reception venue about 15-30 minutes away will be ideal or convenient for everybody. Anything else which requires travel time of more than 30 minutes will just tire your guests and waste precious time.
2. Food and Drinks: Do you want to have a buffet set-up or a sit-down meal? A buffet always offers a wider range of choices and will allow your guests to choose the food that they would like to eat. A sit-down meal, on the other hand, may prove less chaotic, not unless you can have enough buffet stations to accommodate your number of guests. On an absolute amount basis, a buffet may cost you a greater amount of money per head but in terms of value for your money, this may be preferred just from the sheer amount of food that your guests can choose from.
For your drinks, will you have an “open bar”? This means that guests can order any drink that they like and it will be added to the couple's reception tab. Having an “open bar” will surely delight your guests although it may make it difficult for the couple to estimate or limit their reception bill. You may also opt for an alternative where each guest can order one drink of his/her choice. You can also limit the choice of drinks to sodas, fruit juices, and the like to get a better handle on reception costs.
If you are bringing in your own drinks (e.g. wine, champagne) to the reception venue, you should check about corkage fees (for every bottle that you serve) and negotiate for a good price if the rate is too high. Typically, the reception venue will give you the chance to bring in a few bottles (three or five bottles?), free of charge, but beyond that, they will have to charge you something to compensate for the fact that you will not be ordering drinks for them.
Should you decide to provide your own drinks, it is best to station a person whom you can trust at the place where the drinks are so you can be sure that all your bottles are well accounted for.
3. Guests: Will you have seating arrangements for your guests or do you prefer free seating? Should you decide to have certain guests sit together, in assigned tables, you will need to assign people upfront to direct guests to their table assignments. You will also need individuals to act as usherettes. You will need to come up with guest lists where you can check the table assignments and you will need to ask the reception venue to come up with table numbers and name plates, if necessary.
Free seating is always less complicated and saves you from the stress of handling individuals who do not follow their seating arrangements or guests who feel bad as they were not assigned a choice location table.
4. Program and Entertainment: What activities will take place during the reception proper? Who will host the proceedings? Will you have a video presentation? Games? Musical numbers? Dancing? Will you go through the motions of cake-cutting, tossing the bouquet and the garter, your first toast and first dance as a couple? Who will render speeches?
When putting together a formal program within the reception, please bear in mind, that people also take the chance to mingle and talk during the party. Ideally, a formal program should take no more than 30 minutes. Anything longer than that may be too dragging or too boring. Also, if you are bent on having a particular person give a message during the reception, it is best to give that person prior notice as a prepared speech is always better than an impromptu one.
Give the above aspects serious thought and you are well on your way to having a happy and organized wedding reception.
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