What to call our 'Pre-Wedding Reception'

FMIL is planning a big pre-wedding party in our honor that she will host at her home. She wants to be able to celebrate with friends and family in FI's hometown, particularly the more 'extended' family-friends who aren't being invited to the wedding. It's going to end up having more guests than the Mexico wedding, 90-100 people and all from his side (he's from NC, I'm from FL and we live in DC).

SO...my question to you ladies is do you have any thoughts on what she should call the party or how to word the invites so that ppl will understand that the DW wedding is small and all aren't invited. It would def be easier with a post-wedding AHR but we all kinda want to be done after we return from the honeymoon!

 

Thanks!!

What about an "Almost Married Reception" or a Going Away/Bon Voyage Party?

My fiance and I have pretty much the exact same situation, just with different cities involved. I'm from southern Missouri, he's from Boston and we live in St. Louis.

 

Given the geography, it has been very hard to figure out pre and post wedding celebrations. Scratch that, it was very hard to plan a wedding because of that. In fact, the spread all across the country nature of our families was one of the main draws to a destination wedding. We could never come to grips with the unfair nature of planning a wedding in one place and making only one side of the family have to travel. This way, everybody has to travel, including us.

 

Anyway, we also want to just be done when we get back. We really don't want an AHR of any sort, but we finally caved to the pressures of our parents wanting to provide a party for everyone who can't attend the wedding.

 

We've made it clear, via very polite and open discussions, with those who will not be attending the wedding (and weren't invited to wedding) that the wedding in the Dominican is small, low budget, and essentially just our extremely close family and friends. Being able to discuss it has been very helpful. Everyone has really understood our reasons, and it has helped us see the need for the pre-party. We've been able to feel so loved by hearing so many people tell us they want to help us celebrate. So we agreed to the pre-party and we're just calling it our engagement party. We're actually very excited about it now.

I like this idea-or an engagement party??

I love the Bon Voyage party idea. It sounds very "cruise-y", but if you can change it a bit to your exact type of circumstance, I think it works perfectly!

What

I think this is a fabby idea!!

 

Best of luck.xx

I like the Almost Married Celebration idea! It sounds cute!

Send off celebration

Becks, I was wondering what you guys decided to call your pre-party.

Like I mentioned above, we are in pretty much the exact same situation. We were originally going to call ours an engagement party, but when working on the invitations we started to question whether or not that was appropriate. I don't really think it is appropriate anymore, since it's so close to the wedding, but I have NO CLUE what else to call it/use/explain the situation on the invitation either.

Any thoughts on what you used?

msredbird--FMIL hasn't made invitations yet but is thinking that she might not need to actually 'label' the party. We talked about invitation wording that says something like, "They'll marry on the beach in Mexico...let's celebrate now!" (This also kind of eludes to the fact that all party-goers won't be coming to the DW)

 

We also like the idea of using the phrase, "Becky and John are Almost Married!"

 

Everyone will know what the party is for and be excited to celebrate with you!