Greet your guests with a soirée before your big day.
2023 and 2024 have been the years of the anti-bride, with couples putting their own spin on weddings and tossing traditions to the side. For a queer couple, that’s not just a trend– because our weddings naturally break the mold, we’re already used to doing things our own way! But here’s the thing: While we’re so here for ditching the big bridal parties and trading grand festivities for more intimate, personal experiences, we highly encourage keeping a welcome party in your budget.
At its core, a welcome party is a way to greet guests for the wedding celebrations to come. Think of it like a wedding warm up. It’s a great opportunity for couples to get creative with their vision and throw fun, unique events their way. But as an LGBTQ+ couple, it’s so much more important than that. For us, beyond the celebration, a welcome party meant providing an opportunity for our diverse guest list to feel comfortable and connected before the ceremony. It was a chance for our chosen family and given family to meet and break the ice in a relaxed setting, creating a more unified and joyful atmosphere for our wedding weekend.
Some of our family had never had exposure to other LGBTQ+ couples besides ourselves, especially not as intimately as they did at our 90 person wedding. Similarly, some of our friends hadn’t had the privilege of given family in their life anymore, and were about to be exposed to our big, very loud, very close Italian and Jewish families.
Reducing awkwardness, fostering connections and allowing guests to mingle and build friendships before the big day was one of the most impactful and rewarding decisions we made for our wedding. The best part about it? –there are so many different ways to make welcome parties your own!
We chose to tack a welcome party on to the end of our rehearsal as an extended party. We had our immediate family and wedding party gather for a formal family-style dinner early in the evening, and then moved over to the bar area of Boozehounds, one of our fave Palm Springs spots, to have guests gather and mingle in a fun, private setting.
For other couples, you may consider hosting this affair as a way to replace a traditional rehearsal dinner. Or hold your rehearsal dinner on a Thursday night, a welcome party on Friday, and the actual wedding on Saturday to extend celebrations. Your event can be like ours; a chic, simple gathering with cocktails and desserts, or a more interactive fête with a DJ and games. You could even do an outdoor movie night themed welcome party where you get a big screen, serve popcorn and snacks, and pour up cotton candy on champagne. Sounds fun, right?
With so many options, it’s no surprise that welcome parties have become a wedding itinerary mainstay. In our opinion and experience, the absolute move for your LGBTQ+ wedding.
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