Planning a wedding welcome party doesn’t have to be a pain in the you know what. There’s an easy way to welcome your out of town guests to your hometown wedding, or get everyone together at the start of your destination wedding.
As the original micro wedding experts in Las Vegas we’ve learned a few things over the years and are here to coordinate the whole thing so you don’t have to deal with the stress, the drama and the overwhelm. Don’t think of a wedding welcome party as “one more thing” you’ve got to figure out and make happen. If done right, it can be a fun addition to the list of get togethers.
In this blog, we’ll give you everything you need to know about wedding welcome parties and offer tips and tricks for pulling it off.
What Is a Wedding Welcome Party?
It’s the first introduction to the weekend and sets the tone for the celebration. They work great for destination weddings, when everyone has to travel to get there, but are also good to do if you have out-of-town guests attending your hometown wedding.
When Should a Wedding Welcome Party Take Place?
The easy answer is before the wedding, usually it’s the day just before the wedding, but they can happen on any day leading up to your festivities, depending on when guests start arriving. For example, you could use it to replace a traditional rehearsal dinner or tack it onto the end of your rehearsal dinner for extended partying. We’ve even seen couples have the rehearsal on day/night one, the welcome party on day/night two and the wedding on day/night three.
The key is to make your guests feel included. Don’t leave them hanging until the receiving line after the ceremony. Be excited to greet them and do some catching up prior to the big moment.
For a far-flung destination wedding, the timing might look something like this:
If you’ve suggested that guests arrive 3 days before your wedding day so they can get acclimated to the new time zone, do a little sight seeing, hang out with you at the pool, and enjoy some low-key time before the big day, then have an informal welcome party on the first evening.
Follow that up with a more formal rehearsal dinner the next night and then everyone will be ready for the grand finale. The idea is to slowly build for a couple days, say “I do” in style and then wind down as people start to depart the next morning.
If you’d like to tack on an encore, like a morning-after brunch, then that would be appropriate, too.
Why Should You Have a Wedding Welcome Party?
If you’re doing a destination wedding, the further you ask your guests to travel, the more important it is to have a wedding welcome party. If they’re tasked with obtaining a passport, crossing an ocean, navigating customs, learning a foreign language, and/or rolling their suitcases along a cobble stone street, then by golly it’s gonna feel great at the welcome party when everyone gets to collectively proclaim, “We made it!”
A lot of planning and travel arrangements go into everyone just getting to the right place at the right time Plus, no one is going through all the travel hassle so that they can hang out by themselves in their room. They came to see you and the awesome group of family and friends that also think you’re worth all that hassle. So throw a party and enjoy the fact that you’re together and ready for some fun. A wedding welcome party is a great way to kick off the festivities.
Throw a Party That Tells Your Story
A wedding welcome party is all part of the experience that a couple creates for their guests. It allows the couple to craft a narrative that tells their love story. A good wedding welcome party uses pieces of your love story as an excuse to include your closest friends and family in some of your favorite things. For instance, if you first fell in love at a wine tasting festival then you could hold the wedding welcome party at a vineyard or winery. Or maybe you fell in love thanks to your shared love of country music? Then think about holding the wedding welcome party at an authentic barbeque restaurant and playing your favorite country songs. Unlike a more formal wedding reception, the welcome party gives you some latitude to tell your story. Have fun with it.
Setting the Tone and Getting to Know Each Other
The wedding welcome party gives your guests the first impression of your wedding day dreams.
Welcome parties are a good chance to introduce your theme and overall vision for your wedding. It can be used in tandem with the invitation, the dress code, and the welcome party venue to reinforce the vibes you’re going for on your actual wedding day. A wedding welcome party can help you fine tune the tone you’re hoping to have on your wedding day.
Here’ s how. Let’s say the dress code for your beach wedding is more aloha shirts and board shorts than white linen shirts and khaki pants, then now’s the time to define the differences and let everyone embrace the vibe you’re going for.
It’s also a chance for your guests to meet your other guests. The welcome party gives people the chance to meet and get to know each other, if they don’t all already. This way, your wedding day itself is more of a warm gathering of old friends than an awkward mish-mash of strangers.
Don’t think of this as a secondary reason for having a wedding welcome party even though I’ve placed it below setting the tone. Letting your guests get to know each other is hugely important. If you’re like me, then you probably have lots of different group texts in your life representing all the places you’ve been and people you’ve met, and they don’t necessarily overlap. The one common denominator for all these wedding guests is you. Getting them all together for the first time will likely be a little awkward and feel kind of strange, so a wedding welcome party gets the introductions out of the way so everyone can form a shared connection.
The Guest List
The simple answer: Everyone.
As a warm gesture of gratitude, you should include everyone that will be at the wedding itself. This is doubly true for destination weddings. If they are coming at all, they should be included in the welcome party.
But if you’re a more low-key couple, try splitting it into two. First, host a more intimate and quiet welcome party dinner for your immediate families and members of the bridal party. Then migrate to a bar or more lively spot to meet up with the rest of your guests. A different location for the second part of the party will ensure that there’s no awkward overlap if you’re sitting at dinner longer than expected and your B-list guests start arriving and wondering what they missed.
Invitations
Within the larger invitation, you may wish to treat the welcome party a little differently. Depending on the amount of information you need to give your guests about the welcome party, it may even call for its own insert.
Think about what your guests will need to know and be as descriptive as you can. List out clothing and footwear suggestions, provide area maps and list any phone numbers or websites that might be useful. You could put all of this in one spot on an insert, or you could include your wedding website link and direct your guests there for answers to the questions that will inevitably arise.
If there’s a theme or activity involved, such as a golf outing, pizza party or game night, you might want to use appropriate colors, verbiage or designs to highlight the event separately from the more formal pieces of your wedding itinerary.
In this way, your welcome party invitation can act as the first impression of the first impression.
Wording Examples
If Including The Info on an Insert — Generic Usage
Join Us!
Jack and Jill would be delighted to have you join us for a welcome party.
Thursday, April 22, 2027
5:30–9:30 PM
Budweiser Beer Park – Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino
3655 Las Vegas Blvd S, Las Vegas, NV 89109
If Including The Info on an Insert — Sample Theme Usage
Let The Good Times Roll at Our Welcome Party
Please join Jack and Jill for a night of roller skating, great tunes and interactive games as they shake rattle and roll into marriage.
Pigeon’s Roller Rink, Long Beach, CA
Thursday, April 22, 2027
5:30–9:30 PM
6400 E Pacific Coast Hwy, Long Beach, CA 90803
If Directing To Wedding Website
Join us for a welcome party to kick off the weekend! Please visit our wedding website for more information:
<weddingwebsite.com>
Go this route if you’re worried about needing to make changes after invites go in the mail.
Make It Memorable
Like the wedding itself, the wedding welcome party will be a hit with your guests if you’re doing the right things to make it memorable.
Pick a cool location, serve some good food, plan a fun activity or two and go with a fun theme and decor to match.
Location
The location you choose for the wedding welcome party can play on the same themes as your wedding or compliment the venue.
For example, say you’ve chosen to have an autumn harvest themed wedding and you’ve chosen to hold the ceremony in a barn; a good choice for the welcome party might be at a vineyard or cidery.
Does that get the imagination bubbling?
Need more ideas, contact my girl Teresa at Gather After. She’ll help you make it happen so you can make the memories.
Food & Drinks
It’s not a memorable party if the food is so-so or easily forgotten.
Honk Honk!
What’s that?
It’s the food truck you booked to feed your guests!
Or you could pull some strings and score the private dining room at a fancy restaurant. How could anyone forget a wedding welcome party at the ever-popular Carmine’s in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace?
Fun & Games
On a night when the goal is to get people conversing, laughing and getting to know each other, it’s a good idea to play some games or have some interactive activities.
Find a cool bar with some dartboards or a couple of pool tables and invite your people to meet you for a night of bar games. Just make sure you’ve got a pocket full of quarters for the jukebox.
Ax-throwing venues are popping up everywhere. Slinging sharp objects at a wooden target is always a fun way to have some laughs with your friends and family.
Take a hike! Hit the trails with your crew at one of the many gorgeous state and national parks. With nothing but the landscape, fresh air and each other, hikes can be a great way to chat, reminisce and dream about the future.
The point is, you can do pretty much anything for your wedding welcome party. It’s your party — these are the people you love and they’ll get into the spirit because they are excited to be celebrating with the two of you.
We hope these tips and tricks have helped you tighten up your plans for kicking off your wedding festivities.
The wedding welcome party is just one important event you may want to add to your itinerary, which is why we put together the Ultimate Wedding Ceremony Structure Planning Guide. Check it out! It explains a bit more about where the welcome party falls into line with the other pieces.
