Wondering what is the appropriate location for your wedding? Not sure where to have your wedding reception? Don’t know how many guests to invite or how to invite them? Here is some informal wedding etiquette.

Location of wedding ceremony
When planning an informal wedding, the location of the wedding ceremony can be a home, garden, justice of the peace, rectory or chapel. Remember you are not limited to these locations; feel free to pick a place that has significance for you and your partner. My first wedding ceremony took place at city hall and we were married by the mayor. A friend of mine had her wedding ceremony at a small chapel while when my father remarried he rented a local community center hall.

Location of wedding reception
When planning an informal wedding, the location of the wedding reception can be an event room at your church, at home or a restaurant. My first wedding reception was at a restaurant. The four of us (my new husband and two close friends) went and ate an early dinner and took candid wedding pictures at the table and then later near the river behind my house at the time. My friend who married in a small chapel asked all her guests to drive back to her house which was 20 minutes away to join her wedding reception at her home. She had recently remodeled her backyard and it was the perfect reception site.

Number of wedding guests
When planning an informal wedding, the number of wedding guests is usually under 75 people. We chose to just invite my best friends and ask them to be our witnesses so we didn’t have a list of wedding guests to worry about. My friend had about 40 guests and my father had about 25 guests. Obviously if you are from a big family and feel you must invite everyone, including the cousins you haven’t seen in 10 years then feel free to do so. This is just to give you an idea of what typically happens at an informal wedding.

Types of Invitations and Announcements
When planning an informal wedding, the invitations and announcements can be handwritten, telephoned printed from your computer, engraved or thermo graphed. There are plenty of discounted stationery websites that have many types of beautiful invitations and announcements. For my first wedding, we just called my best friends two days before and asked them to be the witnesses and then later we telephoned other friends and family to tell them we were married. My friend made all her invitations on the computer with wedding stationery software. My father had a local wedding stationery store print his invitations and send them directly to the guests.