I second this. In the middle of the chaos and confusion of the wedding, it’s nice to find a few minutes to spend alone together after the ceremony. I’m very glad that we did this at my wedding.
What’s this got to do with a recieving line, though? The two certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. (We didn’t do a receiving line either. We just went table to table and made sure to talk with everyone.)
All the receiving lines I’ve seen have been immediately after the ceremony, just outside the room where the ceremony took place. If you go to yichud right after the ceremony, you can’t have a receiving line.
It means I get more stuff I don’t particularly want. The only wedding favor I’ve gotten that I actually liked was a bottle of bubble solution, because it was fun to blow bubbles.
And I don’t like the expectation of doing wedding favors- I had to come down hard before my wedding and say I Don’t Do Crafts, so any wedding favor that required me to do any craft-type thing was right out. I can think of many things I’d rather do with my time than doing something like wrapping candies in tulle, too, including picking lint out of my bellybutton. Brides have enough to do before weddings without having to work on wedding favors that are something that most people won’t really want.
Ever seen the movie Johnny Dangerously? 
The most recent wedding I attended was that of my sow of a half sister who sat my whole siblings and our families at the worst table at the reception. My major peeve, other than that, was that the cash bar included soda! $2 for a disposable cup of soda!
Generally speaking, the thing I hate most is kinda weird. It’s the overuse of the phrase “at this time” by the DJ or band leader (we had a band). You know, as in, “At this time, we invite you to enjoy your main course.” or “At this time, we introduce the happy couple.” Mr. Caricci and I actually forbid its use. The band was stunned at first, but they didn’t do it.
We also didn’t have the garter, the cake smashing, chicken dancing or making the wedding party dance with each other.
Last wedding I went to there actually was some random Martha-Stewart-Clone lady rounding up the single women to have flowers chucked at them. I even let her round me up and put me with all the single wimmins.
It was my damn wedding.
My maid of honor giggled like a fiend. For hours. Granted, I’d changed out of my wedding dress as soon as possible (We had our wedding in the park - the caterer did BBQ/cookout foods - a white dress in the park with BBQ sauce, ketchup and mustard wasn’t a good idea. We powered through the pictures and I changed into more durable and less white clothing), but you’d think she would have paid some attention during the ceremony! It was only like 10 minutes long!
My husband eventually had to assure this lady I was really the bride, since she didn’t believe me. :smack:
She was some random fairly distant relation of his who’d never met me and hadn’t seen him in ten years.
We eventually actually did the flower chuckings - but mostly because my younger cousins and nieces were all excited about it. The mean age of the flower-catching crew was about 12.
Ah, I see. You could schedule it so that the two both happen though. I’m not opposed to recieving lines that much, but I didn’t care for them enough to do one. As I said before, spending a minute alone is a great idea, even for us gentiles. 
Sorry, I think I mis-spoke here, using the wrong terminology. We only had the vases for the flowers on the table as a “favor”, not something for everyone at the wedding. I think that’s more of a “table decoration” than a “favor”. This works well because only one person per table gets it and that’s usually someone who is interested in it. We didn’t do favors for everyone.
I do like favors that are pick your own candy, though. 
So it’s okay for the bride and groom to be cheap, but not the guests?
You could. Thank you for not telling my mother that before the wedding, though I didn’t want a receiving line, and yichud was the excuse I used for not having one.
I totally agree about the ubiquitous cheap whore who has to show up in a tight-fitting dress with her boobs hanging out, who then gets hammered and starts dancing like a stripper who lost her pole. Honey, the bride looks like a million dollars. You look like 20 bucks. Tone it down a bit.
I hate it when there’s a band that plays nothing but cheeseball 40’s tunes and the younger people just sit around. Play some music to dance to! To me, the dancing is an important part of the wedding. In my family, people who would never dance anywhere else will dance the night away when they’re at a wedding. I don’t want to hear big band wannabe crap. (That said, if I hear Play That Funky Music White Boy at one more wedding I’m charging the DJ booth and staging a coup.)
I’m getting married next year and reading this thread has made me feel very good about our plans. We’re having the ceremony and reception on-site. The ceremony is going to be short and sweet since we don’t want any meaningless ritual stuff. (Also, I have mild stage fright so I want to make it as short as possible.) We each have 2 attendants who are not required to wear particular colors or any of that stuff. No cake smashing, no garter toss. There will even be an on-site baby sitter and a room for kids to nap in.
One thing I’m not sure about is that there will be many seniors at our wedding as well as families with young children, and I want to make them feel comfortable about leaving early so they don’t feel obliged to sit there until 12 am. But I’m not sure exactly how to do that.
Well, there is cheap. You know, like not wanting to pay $10,000 for a few hundred of your friends and family to drink free all night. Other words for this would be “thrifty” or “financially sane”.
Then there’s CHEAP. You know, like obnoxiously drinking too much simply because you don’t have to pay for it, and hoarding the drinks back at your table so you don’t have to buy more afterwards. Other words for this are “boorish” and “jackass of the highest order”.
Hey, I’m not condoning that behavior from the guests. I’m just saying that when you ask people to come to your party and bring a gift, it’s good form to provide them with refreshing beverages.
If you can’t afford an open bar for a few hundred people, then you can’t afford to invite a few hundred people to your wedding. Invite a hundred, and treat them properly.
I have a little hijack of a question: is it common for the couple or whoever is paying for the party to be charged later for the open bar? At my wedding it was part of the price per head. As an aside, none of the places I looked at had an option of no open bar, or at least they weren’t sharing that they did. Yes, I did get married in Long Island.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. They will just head out when they please. Those leaving early generally feel free to start doing so after dessert is served, I think.
I also forgot one more wedding tip: Transportation! Make sure to have a bus or something available to take people from the reception to a hotel if it isn’t already on site. I wouldn’t want to have people driving drunk from my wedding, so we had transportation to and from everywhere and we made sure that everyone knew about it. This isn’t so much a pet peeve of mine, since in the past dozen or so weddings I’ve been to transport has always been provided.
If it wasn’t, I’d simply not drink and leave early, as would most others, so the wedding party scene would suffer for it.
Let me guess: You’re a New Yorker?
Bostonian, actually.
Well, I’m of that age where I’ve been going to several weddings every year for a while now and it’s extremely rare for them to be open bar. I’d say only about one in ten. It’s certainly nothing that’s expected, and it’s no big deal for guests to spend a few bucks if they choose to drink at the bar. However that couple bucks per guest adds up to be a lot, so I don’t see why it’s needed to pay it all myself.
Brides who assume that a) all receptions are alike and b) all bandleaders do the same things at all receptions. You don’t find out they were expecting you to lead toasts, call dances, etc., until they come zilla’ing up midway thru the reception with aghast looks on their faces.
People who only hire live music for dinner, because of course you need a deejay for serious dancers.
Officious caterers who are highly reluctant to feed the band no matter WHO’S paying.
Being on the job and unable to ingratiate oneself with the groom’s hot sister.
Perhaps it’s not universally expected, but I maintain that a cash bar is tacky. When you throw a big, formal party, you provide refreshments. It’s a wedding, not a potluck.
I got married in NH, and we had an open bar. The way it worked was that we paid x-amount of money in advance. The bar kept track of how much was spent, and when the amount was almost reached, they let us know - we could either pay more, or close the bar. They would recommend an amount to pre-pay depending on the amount of guests and number of hours you wanted the bar to stay open.
Another place we looked at would keep tracks of how many drinks were bought, then we would be charged afterwards, per drink. I think that would work well if you had a lot of non-drinkers. Otherwise, you’re getting charged per head for a bunch of people who won’t even use the bar.
