Courthouse Wedding

The Q: Good Morning, My fiance and I are planning to get married at the Court House followed by a reception of 75 or so guests. Since most court house weddings only allow a small number of guests to witness the actual ceremony, how can I explain this on the invitations that they cannot come to the court house but we would appreciate their presence at the reception venue? What is the most proper way to do this without making any guest feel excluded? Thank you in advance for your time! I really love your site and have seen you a couple of times on Whose Wedding is it Anyway. I love your work and if it were in my budget, I'd definitely hire your team! :)  - Candice

The A:  Candice, thanks so much for the kudos, it's appreciated!  In terms of your dilemma, I think that what you need to do is have invitations printed for your RECEPTION only.  There isn't any point in providing the details to a ceremony that they aren't invited to, and it's totally not rude to keep the ceremony intimate (though, dear readers, the converse is not true- it's TOTALLY rude to invite guests to the ceremony only and not the reception). 

But, back to the question at hand:  How do you word the invite?  First, for those who will be able to join you at the courthouse, simply offer a verbal invitation to that portion of the day. For the printed cards for the rest of  your guests, try playing around with a version of something like this:

Who ever the host is (you, your families, etc)
Request the pleasure of your company
at the wedding reception of
Your name
and
Your Fiance's name
Friday, the twentieth of March
Two Thousand and Nine

Actually, I personally enjoy more playful wording, but be careful NOT to refer to the the wedding in the past tense since you still will be having the wedding that day (to clarify, basically don't send something out that says "We Got Hitched!", since you haven't yet)

I hope that helps and HAVE FUN!!!!