A Wedding Reception Story

The wedding reception is the event after the main event. Once the wedding ceremony has officially completed, in most cases the newlyweds and all the guests gather somewhere for a few hours of celebration of the union. In most cases, such an event is the perfect end to the night. But I wanted to share one story regarding some guests at one of my best friend’s weddings, to help you avoid making the same mistake as they did.

The wedding ceremony and the following wedding reception took place a few years ago, and the guest list was lengthy – almost 300 total guests if I had to guess. But there was one guest who really bothered me based on his behavior at the wedding reception. I did not know personally (even though he came from the bride’s side of the family) and on the surface he sure looked like a well-mannered person.

But the problem was that during the wedding reception, he would not stop talking to the bride. Not in a flirty way or anything like that, but he just kept talking to her and even the groom on occasion. Obviously, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the reason this all bugged me was simply because the bride and groom should not be spending so much time with any one guest.

Especially with a guest list that long, the couple barely had time to make their way around the ballroom, thanking each guest for coming along with engaging in some brief small talk before moving on to the next guests. And this guy had the nerve to occupy so much of the bride and groom’s time by talking to them.

I even talked to the bride specifically about the gentleman, a few weeks later once she returned from her honeymoon. Without revealing who the person was in detail (other than the fact that he was a relatively close family member of hers), she noted that although he meant well, she was a bit peeved by his persistence on talking to her throughout the night. She actually had already forgotten the ordeal more or less by the time the night was over, but it was still notable enough that she could recall it when I brought it up with her a few weeks later.

Luckily for my friend, she was not too bothered by this persona at her wedding, which was the most important thing in hindsight. But man, if something like that had happened to me during my wedding reception, I would have been beyond upset, and at the very least asked my husband to get me out of that awkward situation. And again, people who behave this way more often than not mean well (as was the case with this man). But it still doesn’t detract from the intimacy that couples should have during their wedding reception.

If you need to catch up extensively with the newlyweds, there is plenty of time to do that when they come back from their honeymoon. So please don’t make the same mistake as this person. Because if you do so, whether or not you realize it, you are taking away from the couple’s precious first few moments of quality time as husband and wife.