In-Between Moments

I've been really anxious about several aspects of our wedding since we started planning, but my biggest worry has undoubtedly been making sure our guests all feel important and included. I am afraid that some guests will be upset if they travel a great distance and only see us for a few minutes at the reception. My fear started after our engagement party, an event with fewer people than the actual wedding, where I still felt pulled in a million directions and deeply regret not being able to spend more time with certain people. Our reception is only five hours. (Yes, that sounds like a long time, but pictures will eat up some of our time there, our official parent dances will eat up more, we are hoping to eat some of the Buttery's yummy food, and we also would like to have a couple of dances without the spotlight on us.) And within those five hours, we have well over a hundred people with whom we want to spend time. Over a hundred people with whom we probably want to spend the entire time. Over a hundred people who will have traveled to celebrate our wedding and spend time with us. I want them all to leave our wedding weekend feeling like an integral part of our celebration. I don't want any guests to feel like they searched all night for us only to receive a quick hug and thank you for coming speech.

D and I are planning a holiday weekend wedding and our hope from the start has been that friends and family will come up and spend several days with us, enjoying various activities. While we don't have the budget to pay for multiple activities, we can at least organize simple events (like apple picking, wine tasting, hiking, etc.) for other days. However, we wonder if people will actually arrive early/stay late and join in these additional optional activities.

I have been reading a blog called 2000 Dollar Wedding (their story is awesome!) for a while and while the author, Sara, always provides great tips and offers advice on tough planning dilemmas, one post a few days ago really resonated with me. She described certain "in-between moments" during her wedding weekend -- those moments between the "major events" -- where she and her now-husband spent high quality time with guests.

Her wording captured the essence of what Dave and I have been hoping to accomplish with our additional activities and her post illustrated the importance of these moments. I shared it with Dave and we agreed this was a concept we wanted to highlight for our guests so they could understand why these optional activities are on the agenda and why we really want to see them there. Hopefully these events will allow the guests who attend to spend time with us and also meet each other. And hopefully our reception will feel less like quick hellos to guests and more like a succession of congratulatory hugs from people with whom we're in the midst of spending a wonderful weekend.

And then we won't feel too bad stealing away on a private hayride... for just a few minutes... :)