First Impressions
When guests arrive at your wedding ceremony venue, they’ll be taken by the beauty of the site, and a celebratory tone is set immediately by the smiling, friendly greeters standing at the entrance. It’s a new trend to ask close relatives or friends to serve as your official welcome party, greeting the guests and pointing them toward the inside or garden wedding location. They may hand out your wedding programs and also let guests know where champagne is being served – in the case of a garden wedding taking place on-site – or even where small children may be taken for sitter service during the ceremony.
The immediate recognition of greeters puts guests at ease, eliminating the ‘where do we go?’ concerns that some guests may have when they arrive at a sprawling wedding location. With the guidance of your greeters, guests enter the wedding site ready to enjoy themselves, soon met inside by banquet site staff members bearing drinks for their refreshment.
How to Select Your Greeters
Choose at least three special friends or relatives, ideally from your and your groom’s sides so that someone at the wedding venue entrance can recognize arriving guests. If you have an extremely large guest list, choose four greeters to eliminate a line forming at the door.
Choose guests who are naturally friendly, upbeat and good conversationalists who have no anxieties about talking to strangers.
Instructions for Greeters
Ask greeters to stand just outside of the wedding venue entrance, on the steps or at the base of steps, so that they’re immediately seen by arriving guests. At an outdoor wedding, they might stand at a point where the pathway leading to the ceremony begins.
Make it a firm rule that greeters are not to text, check their iPhones, or be distracted by their dates. Their full focus must be on their greeting tasks.
Ask guests to dress in accordance with the wedding’s formality. Since these are representatives of your wedding, it is perfectly okay to set a dress code, such as cocktail-length dress or suit.
Let greeters know how many wedding programs to give out, such as one program per couple, or one program per guest. If your wedding budget is limited, or if you’re having a green wedding, this top wedding idea eliminates waste.
If you expect guests who do not speak English, it’s smart to choose a greeter who speaks, for instance, Spanish or Italian for a welcome greeting guests appreciate.
Give greeters full information on where essentials are, such as the coat check, restrooms, handicap access to the ceremony site, so that they may instruct guests who request these locations.
Remember to give greeters information on directions to the reception site, if it is different from the ceremony location. Having a stack of printed driving directions is always a smart wedding idea, even if guests decide to just program the reception address into their GPS or smartphone as they exit your ceremony location.
Wedding greeters should remain at the entrance to your wedding venue until the last possible minute before your wedding ceremony or reception begin, so that late-arriving guests are welcomed and directed.
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau
