<p>Many months back I started a thread about East Coast meets West Coast and the differences of how things are done with weddings. It was quite an eye opener as thread participants learned about different customs. The wedding is on a Sunday late afternoon, and as the groom’s parents, we are hosting a dinner on Saturday evening for all of the out-of-town guests, as is our family custom. This will probably mean that 90% of the wedding guests will be invited to the Saturday dinner. Thanks to respondents’ suggestions on the first thread, I chose a restaurant venue site unseen. We are also hosting breakfast at the hotel on Monday morning for all guests staying at the “host” hotel. Again, family custom.</p>
<p>A couple of unusual (in my mind ;)) things which have cropped up:
- Bride’s parents will not allow alcohol to be served at the reception, other than a champagne toast. We will permit alcohol to be served at the Saturday evening dinner, and while I don’t want to offend the bride’s parents, I think this is our choice to make as the hosts.
- Bride’s parents have given us invitations and envelopes with inserts to send to our part of the guest list. We must get them addressed and stamped. Frankly, this really surprised me. I thought that it was traditional for the bride’s family to send out all the invitations.</p>
<p>well, I am learning so much from these marriage threads. If champagne is permitted, then why not wine? mimosas? </p>
<p>Are you truly responsible for the extra work of envelopes?</p>
<p>Sorry, I have no advice. I am the student, as future MOG.</p>
<p>Thanks for the update! I want to reassure the tread readers that “champaigne only” is not a typical Seattle tradition! :)</p>
<p>OP, do not hesitate to pm if you need suggestions, local info, etc. </p>
<p>I don’t think “bride’s parents will not allow alcohol to be served” is a normal way to describe menu decisions. Would you say the grooms’s parents will not allow Gatorade to be served, when what you meant is that you made different choices about what to offer your guests? Would you say the groom’s parents chose not to allow tacos to be served? If the groom’s parents are giving the party, they decide what food and drinks to give their guests.</p>
<p>I grew up in Seattle and certainly addressed, stamped and mailed all the invitations. MIL had provided a list of names and addresses. I have photos to prove it. Lately invites to the weddings of old friends’ children are printed and have the return address of the bride. This isn’t an East Coast vs West Coast thing. But it’s really a minor thing…
As far as limiting it to one champagne toast, maybe they know better than to serve alcohol to their family?</p>
<p>Well, along with my surprise about having to address, stamp and mail all the invitations for “our” side of the wedding, we were literally given the EXACT number of invitations we need, not one more just in case something happened to one of them. I was not going to invite anyone extra. 
We were given two extra envelopes “just in case.” No way was that going to work for me since I planned to address the invites on the computer using a calligraphy font, and I knew since the invitation envelopes were an unusual small, square style that it would take me a number of trial and errors to get it right. So, I went to a speciality store and bought a dozen extra envelopes. They weren’t exactly the same size, but the color matched and only the most discerning guest might think that they are 1/4" too big, :)</p>
<p>I had one “back and forth” where I explained that I needed a certain amount of invitations and the bride thought that if a cousin of my son wasn’t yet married, that person should go on the parent’s invitation. Except that I was talking about cousins ranging in age up to 30 years old who do not live at home and are independent. I did explain to my son that I would really be embarrassed to do that, so I did get those added in to my “pile.”</p>
<p>@bookworm, we are actually allowed to serve wine during the cocktail hour, but not at the reception. Our first instinct was that perhaps there was someone within the bride’s family who had an alcohol problem and the family was trying to avoid any issues. But my S says that the bride’s family is just anti-alcohol. </p>
<p>I agree that it’s your party so you set the menu, just like they can set the reception menu.</p>
<p>The invitation thing is weird. Did they ask you for addresses/list of names or just a number? If the former, I would have expected that they would send the invites. Not a big deal, I guess, but a kind of silly departure from the norm.</p>
<p>@Youdon’tsay-I had actually prepared a list of names and addresses for them, but then my son said that he would bring me the number of invitations that we needed so that I could address them, put stamps on them plus the response cards and send them out. I “thought” the norm was that the bride’s family sent out the wedding invitations, but this is my first child to be married, so I don’t know if this is really how things are done now or a departure from the norm.</p>
<p>I think I would ask my SON to take care of the envelopes!</p>
<p>@MaineLonghorn, if you knew my son, you would know that I would NEVER do that. He did not get the “attention to detail” gene that I have, LOL. Seriously, he is really in the middle with this. I believe that he knows what is “the norm” and he’s just stuck in the middle. He wants to pick his battles, and this certainly isn’t one he would “go to the mat” on.</p>
<p>Is it this weekend? So hot!
I just had champagne at my wedding, but Im notoriously cheap.
(I also had been to very few weddings & didn’t know really what to do)</p>
<p>Weddings in mid-August, EK. Have to hope the weather is “Seattle normal,” as the bride’s family picked an un-air conditioned venue.</p>
<p>well hopefully its on Elliott Bay & has a nice breeze.</p>
<p>@CardinalFang-Your comment above appears to make the assumption that the bride’s parents are paying for the whole wedding reception and therefore get to make all the choices. This is not true in this case. They are paying for the food and the venue. We are paying for everything else. I was stating a fact about a menu choice which had been decided by the bride’s parents because I thought it was a bit unusual and was interested to hear other people’s thoughts.</p>
<p>This is not a regional thing - it is a quirk of this particular family. There are a few reception venues that have interesting alcohol policies, though. Our reception was in the ‘Great Hall’ at the Episcopal church and one could have champagne and all the wine they could drink but no beer. My in-laws are teetotalers but we decided that they just didn’t have to drink if they didn’t want to and that wasn’t going to put a crimp in how we planned the event. Things in Seattle can be less formal than other places, but I haven’t heard of handing over invitation for self addressing. On the weather . . . they hit the date just right for sunny and warm/hot (by our standards) with no rain. </p>
<p>I did the computer calligraphy for son’s Bar Mitzvah. I bought lots of envelopes in same size, to practice on. This was many years ago, and my printer couldn’t handle the odd shapes. I went to a g/f’s house who had a nifty printer and we did them there. The addresses were already typed out on Word, so easy to highlight.</p>
<p>I recall other parents asking me if I could forward the list to them, as most of the friends were the same.</p>
<p>Maybe they think they are doing you a favor by enabling you to direct your allotted number of invitations to whomever you please…or maybe they’re just lazy. :)</p>
<p>The no-alcohol thing must be a family quirk. A friend’s brother married a girl from a born-again missionary family in the northeast, and they refused to serve alcohol OR have dancing at the reception!</p>
<p>I’d say that you can serve whatever you like at the parties you host. (Although I personally would be sensitive about food choices if one of the families came from a tradition with dietary restrictions, just in case.) No one is going to pour alcohol down their throats.</p>
<p>@Consolation- We would be the family with the dietary restrictions, so that won’t be an issue. We have a large private room for the Saturday evening dinner and I will even go so far as to set up the dinner tables so that the bride’s family doesn’t need to sit anywhere near the bar. I don’t drink either, but that doesn’t mean that I should prohibit my guests from drinking. They are “guests.” I will be interested to see, however, if any of the bride’s family guests do “indulge.” </p>
<p>I’d be willing to bet that they will! :)</p>
<p>Re: the invitations. It seems unusual to me for them to give you invitations and envelopes and have you actually address and stamp the invitations to your guests. You were very smart to get extra envelopes. I remember doing computer calligraphy for my sons’ Bar Mitzvahs and having several mistakes before we got it right.</p>
<p>We were invited to a cousin’s daughter’s wedding last summer and they sent a single invitation to our house that also included our adult sons, even though neither lived with us and one had been on his own for 5 years already. I’m expecting the same thing this summer when another cousin’s daughter gets married. I don’t know if people are trying to save money or are just not interested in sending an email to get my kids’ addresses. I’m wondering this year if S1’s fiancee will be invited; she was not invited to last year’s wedding (but they weren’t engaged at that point).</p>
<p>If her family is handling the reception, then I guess they can decide what’s served at the reception. By the same token, if you’re hosting the rehearsal dinner, then you can serve what you want. What do your S and FDIL have to say about the alcohol preferences at the reception?</p>
<p>BTW, we’ll be hosting the rehearsal dinner for S1’s wedding next summer, with most everyone but FDIL’s immediate family being from out of town. How have you managed to keep your rehearsal dinner distinct from the wedding reception?</p>