For a small 50 person wedding, weekday is fine especially if most of your guests are local. I would try to make it a Thurs or Friday night. 11 PM is not very late. It's not that different than going out for a nice restaurant for dinner.

However, I would try to shorten the schedule.

6 PM ceremony- so that your local guests could leave work at a relatively normal time.
7-9 dinner
9-10/11 socializing/dancing

I will be attending in Monday wedding soon. It will cost us almost $1000 in lost pay plus travel - that's a burden to the guests in order to save the couple some $.

However, I will take a Monday wedding over a destination wedding any day.

A 4:30 pm start is irritating. I wouldn't mind a 6pm wedding, though even then, given traffic, many people would have to leave work early. But asking me to take basically a half-day? It just seems a little rude.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If people do attend, many will be there out of a sense of obligation and won't be very happy to be there. Is that how you want your wedding day to feel?

Not only that, even the ones who decline will ALWAYS REMEMBER that you chose a venue over your guests. It's incredibly immature of you to even consider doing this, to the point that you're too immature to be getting married.

Ehh or she was prioritizing being married over having a party

OP here. The venue is a small hotel in Old Town Alexandria. We are thinking small (50 people) gathering of closest friends and family, most of whom are local. 4:30 pm ceremony. 5-6 reception; 7-9 dinner 10 - 11 dancing. Not a big wedding.

Why would anyone want to be out u til 11 dancing on a week night. This schedule is crazy...you want to have the whole wedding experience on the cheap. You need to compromise and either spend more money or lower your expectations.

Anonymous wrote:Man I felt tacky compromising and doing a Sunday wedding. This is crazy.

Sunday night is tacky. Sunday brunch is fine.

It's beyond rude to ask people to take time off from work (remember that many people in america aren't fortunate enough to have such gratuitous time off) for your wedding. Either have it on a Saturday or elope during the week if you insist on having it during the week.

Just another reason to skip weddings.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're trying to plan a small weekday wedding in early November as we really want to marry this year. Problem is, most guests have children and work, obviously. Is this a terrible idea? Its the only way we can afford our venue.

Both my weddings were on weekdays for the same reason. A Monday and a Thursday. I backed both up against holidays. No hard feelings if people couldn't make it. Only person I missed was a friend whose flight was canceled.

You may not have had any hard feelings towards your guests, but i guarantee they had hard feelings against you. They just didn't tell you.

I would go for a sibling or my 2 best friends. No one else

4:30 start with to her traffic around here menas guests have to leave work at 3 and find after school care. I wouldn't do it. I think it's a recipe for a people being late and cranky.

Whenever this type of question gets asked on dcum, there are inevitably posters who say that they did this for their wedding and people thought it was no problem and had a lovely time....

And i call BS. Do those posters think their friends were going to tell them that they resented their weeknight wedding and had a lousy time?? Whenever we get invited to "inconvenient" weddings (long weekends or holidays, difficult travel, etc), in the weeks and months leading up to the wedding, all of us and our friends are always grumbling about how annoyed we are to attend. But of course we never breathe a word of this to the couple! We smile, we dress up and have a good time at the event proper -- even if the circumstances of getting there were a huge inconvenience. But it doesn't mean we aren't all annoyed.

OP - the ONLY way a weeknight wedding is palatable to most people is if you get married at a small ceremony first and then have a party at a venue from 7-10pm. 4:30pm start time is totally not cool - unless it's just immediate family and a witness from each side.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're trying to plan a small weekday wedding in early November as we really want to marry this year. Problem is, most guests have children and work, obviously. Is this a terrible idea? Its the only way we can afford our venue.

Both my weddings were on weekdays for the same reason. A Monday and a Thursday. I backed both up against holidays. No hard feelings if people couldn't make it. Only person I missed was a friend whose flight was canceled.

End thread. It's a bad idea.

Man I felt tacky compromising and doing a Sunday wedding. This is crazy.

Anonymous wrote:We're trying to plan a small weekday wedding in early November as we really want to marry this year. Problem is, most guests have children and work, obviously. Is this a terrible idea? Its the only way we can afford our venue.

Both my weddings were on weekdays for the same reason. A Monday and a Thursday. I backed both up against holidays. No hard feelings if people couldn't make it. Only person I missed was a friend whose flight was canceled.

A weekday (evening) wedding would be very welcome and would seriously cut down on the likelihood that guests will become drunk and obnoxious. Have a lovely candlelight ceremony followed by dinner and some dancing.

I wouldn't be thrilled about it, but I'd go! I imagine it would be a bit more of a subdued feeling vs the weddings I normally attend where there is a ton of dancing and partying (not necessarily drunk, just the atmosphere). Kind of hard to want to dance all night knowing you've got to get up in the morning to go to work, ya know?