The Perfect Reception: The Triangle's Insider Guide

Your wedding day is one of the most important in your life, but because you’ll only do it once (hopefully) you don’t have a lot of experience. In fact, most brides have never planned a large-scale party before their wedding. So, we talked with event planners with years of experience and scores of brides to bring you this insider guide to planning the perfect reception.

Insider Tip #1: Choose the reception style that fits you and your guest list.
So many couples make the cocktail reception vs. seated meal decision in the dark. In most cases, a seated dinner is ideal in the following cases – if your party is very large and formal, and you think you’ll feel overwhelmed by the entire crowd and would like some time to sit and eat with a small group of people, or if you have a very small party. Seem strange that we recommend the seated reception for very small and very large parties? At very small receptions (less than 75), it creates an intimate feeling and small parties feel lost and overwhelmed at most cocktail style receptions.

Insider Tip #2: Have assigned seating.
This is an item where a little headache and planning of the bride’s part leads to simplicity for your guests. Take the time and energy to seat your guests for the main meal. Even if you’re having a station party, it’s nice to give everyone a seat that they can come back to. If you don’t seat guests, you can expect groups to be split up and guests to wander looking for a seat. What’s more, you may find that the guests that have the most reason to be up and about (you, your husband, your mom, your dad) don’t have a seat for most of the night without evicting a guest. So at the very least, reserve some seats for yourselves and mark them with your names, not just a “reserved” sign.

Insider Tip #3: Stick to the cocktail hour.
Many brides and grooms are tempted to lengthen the cocktail hour because they miss most of it while taking post ceremony photos. Don’t. Your guests have been standing and waiting for you to arrive for an hour, they have been drinking and hopefully enjoying some light hors d’oeuvres. They are ready to get on with the show. They’d like to see some dances, eat, and most probably – they’d like to sit.

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