need help with wording a wedding reception invite...

[Anonymous]

1. Please join us for an evening of dinner, dancing, and celebration immediately following the ceremony

or

2. Please join us for an evening of dinner, dancing, and celebrating immediately following the ceremony.

I feel that using 'celebration' is more correct; since the evening will consist of those events. Dinner is a noun, dancing in this form is a noun; so shouldn't celebration also be a noun? The invitation card company says that 'celebrating' is correct, but I don't feel that a verb is correct for the way the sentence is written.

Your thoughts please!

[Steven D]

1. Please join us for an evening of dinner, dancing, and celebration immediately following the ceremony

or

2. Please join us for an evening of dinner, dancing, and celebrating immediately following the ceremony.

I feel that using 'celebration' is more correct; since the evening will consist of those events. Dinner is a noun, dancing in this form is a noun; so shouldn't celebration also be a noun? The invitation card company says that 'celebrating' is correct, but I don't feel that a verb is correct for the way the sentence is written.

Your thoughts please!

It's possible to use "celebrating" as a gerund. A gerund is an -ing form of a verb. Gerunds function as nouns. The invitation card company is correct, but I agree with you. I think "celebration" works better.

Personally, I would write it like this:

Please join us for an evening of celebration, which will include dinner and dancing.

or:

Please join us for an evening of dinner, dance, and celebration.

In my second suggestion, all the nouns are non verbal nouns. It's better to use all gerunds - verbals - or non verbal nouns. The structure is better and it sounds better. It's a more logically formed sentence in that way.

You could say, "dancing, dining, and celebrating". However, I prefer one of my first two suggestions.