Post Wedding Brunch

So there was this letter on indiebride about affording a post-wedding brunch.

CAN'T AFFORD BRUNCH?

Dear Elise:

My fiance and I, and my mother, to a lesser extent, are paying for our wedding in the spring. My fiance's mother is unable to contribute to any of the costs, which is fine, but we are running into a bit of a difficult situation in that we would like to have a post-wedding brunch, but neither we nor my mother will be able to finance another event. Is it extremely tacky to have a non-hosted brunch? I'm thinking it might be.

Thanks for any advice.

- Brunching Bride

Dear BB,

Simply stated: it is not a good idea to invite people to a party that they will have to pay for. There is no way to graciously issue this invitation and invariably people will show up, not realizing they were expected to shell out and wind up confused and possibly put out.

This does not, of course, mean that you have to give up on the whole brunch idea. Instead you should refine your plans. What can you afford to do? Could you manage a large-scale picnic-type event? There are a lot of ways to imagine an inexpensive brunch party once you take the whole sit-down meal out of the equation. An at-home buffet-style gathering could also be very affordable.

The bottom line is that you would like everyone to be able to get together, and this is possible even on a small budget as long as you reconfigure your expectations. See where revised thinking leads you and don't give up hope.

Congratulations,

Elise


I adore the advice Elise gives on indiebride because she's nice to the brides and gives them practical advice. This question is fun because I am a big proponent of ancillary events for weddings. Most guests will spend a grand total of seven minutes with the wedding couple during the wedding. That's just the way weddings go. But if you have a post wedding something, it creates a relaxed space for loved ones to spend some quality time with the wedding couple.

Traditionally, this has come in the form of a post wedding brunch, but I have seen this play out in several different ways. This is a chance to unwind, open presents, and catch up with everyone. Many couples get married in the early afternoon and have a late lunch reception. This leaves time to have a relaxed dinner. In the cases of a couple of housemates, we went pack to the group house, invited anyone who was free to come and chillax and ordered pizza. In the case of my friend Evelyn. they threw a party in their hotel room with cheese and crackers.

We had a post-wedding brunch hosted by Rootbeer. Knowing that noone was going to do any cooking the day after the wedding, we got a platter of bagels from Pumpernickel's and a pastry platter from Bread and Chocolate. Rootbeer herself was kind enough to provide her well appointed apartment and orange juice, coffee and tea. The brunch set us back and grant total of $80 bucks.

This brings me back to the original question which was whether to have a non-hosted brunch. It's pretty easy to have a hosted one that won't clear your bank account. Wine and cheese, pizza, or bagels don't need to set you back much at all. The funnest part of all of these events was that they got to use the arrangements from the wedding itself to decorate.

Once again, I would highly recommending doing a post wedding thing because the impact is low and the fun factor is high.