Wedding times

[aggiedvm2012]

I was wondering the general consensus on this:
We are planning on getting married at a Catholic church, but the only times they have available are 11, 2 and 8:30. I''d rather not have it at 11 and 8:30 is out of the question, but how do you work a dinner with a 2 pm wedding? If you did it, how?

It is an out-of-town wedding (we are in between the 2 towns - about 2-3 hours drives for both parties v. 6 hour drives for one group) so I feel like a dinner is required to make it worth their time to drive down. Otherwise we would just do cake and punch. My fiancee suggested just having hors d''oeuvres but I''m not sure about that either. The only other thing I can think of is to have an early (really early!) dinner at about 4. Is asking people to wait until 5 rude? The reception will be in town also.

Thanks!

 

[hawaiianorangetree]

I don''t think that asking your guests to wait till 5 for dinner is rude at all! But since everyone is OOT what if you were to find an activity of some sort, such as a sightseeing tour for them to do whilst your wedding party is off having photos, that way it will make the time seem to go faster and then you could probably start dinner even later if you wish.

 

[tigerhearted]

2pm is fine! People won''t even be getting hungry until 4-5pm anyway. And 2pm is late enough to give people time to eat lunch beforehand. If you are really concerned, you can set out some appetizers (as fancy or cost-effective as you need them to be) for people to nibble on. Or you can do like we are doing -- we''re having a 1pm ceremony and serving a light picnicy style luncheon and desserts, not a full sit-down meal. Our crowd is pretty mellow, so things will probably wind down by 5pm, early enough for people to grab a full dinner afterward if they are still hungry.

 

[honey22]

I had a 2pm wedding but granted it was a DW with the ceremony and reception at the same place. But anyhoo, I don''t see a problem with starting pre-dinner drinks and canapes at 5pm. Your guests will sort themselves out in the meantime, don''t worry. Most people will hit a pub for some predinner drinkies I have found from past experience.

 

[charbie]

will they do 2:30 by chance? that''s what we did for ours- we had the same time options and we asked for a 2:30pm wedding. plus, they say weddings are supposed to start on the half hour...some weird tradition my mom told me about. either way, with it being an out of town wedding, my guests liked that they could relax and not rush from one event to another, and we had time to just enjoy getting pictures and have FUN.

i know a half hour isn''t a huge difference, but for us it worked great. Catholic ceremony lasting from 2:30-3:30, then pictures/receiving from 3:30ish-4. people were able to go to the hotel, change, freshen-up, and be back at the reception hall by 6 for hors d''oeurves and cocktails. toasts/dinner then started at 6:35- cocktails were supposed to go a bit longer, but i was so anxious to get things moving that i asked if they could push things up and get the party started!

 

[Clairitek]

Date: 3/1/2010 10:38:36 PM
Author:aggiedvm2012
I was wondering the general consensus on this:
We are planning on getting married at a Catholic church, but the only times they have available are 11, 2 and 8:30. I''d rather not have it at 11 and 8:30 is out of the question, but how do you work a dinner with a 2 pm wedding? If you did it, how?

It is an out-of-town wedding (we are in between the 2 towns - about 2-3 hours drives for both parties v. 6 hour drives for one group) so I feel like a dinner is required to make it worth their time to drive down. Otherwise we would just do cake and punch. My fiancee suggested just having hors d''oeuvres but I''m not sure about that either. The only other thing I can think of is to have an early (really early!) dinner at about 4. Is asking people to wait until 5 rude? The reception will be in town also.

Thanks!

Ahhh gotta love the "Catholic Gap"! We had that too and it worked out fine. Our ceremony was at 2. We finished up group pictures after that and then went off alone to do couple pictures. We started our cocktail house at 5 and arrive shortly after that to start the party. If you are having a full mass I can guess that your ceremony will be about an hour. You could always arrange to have hors d''oeuvres at 4 for your guests and then arrive at 5 (assuming you would do your pictures together after the ceremony). People don''t always expect to go straight from ceremony to reception when the ceremony is in a church. I can''t recall one church wedding that I''ve been to where things were back to back, so don''t stress too much!

I do agree that if guests are driving 2-3 hours they are probably figuring a meal will be served, or that there will be a heavy appetizers and cocktail reception.

 

[laine]

As a guest, I''d rather have an early dinner than a gap in between. So you could have ceremony from 2-3, receiving line and time to chat (normally I don''t love these, but you have time to kill, so its perfect), time to get to the reception--that kills another 40 minutes or so. So then the reception starts at 3:45 maybe, do cocktail hour while you take pics. Then maybe do toasts or first dance before dinner, and its already 5pm and a perfect time to eat!

I had a friend whose ceremony started at noon or 1, then we went straight to the reception, with cocktails, dinner, dancing, everything. I didn''t know until she told us later that the whole thing was over by 6 or 7pm--I''d have never realized we ate dinner early and got out early (i suppose it helped that the ballroom had no windows and it was late fall so it was still dark when we left).

 

[zoebartlett]

Personally, I think that asking guests to wait for dinner seems like a long time if the ceremony''s at 2 and the reception doesn''t begin until 5. Maybe not though. Let''s see, if the ceremony ends at 3 and it takes some time (say 30 min?) to get to your reception venue, then I''m assuming guests will have hors d''oeuvres around 3:30 while you''re doing pictures. If you''re being announced and doing your first dance right away (assuming you''re having dancing), that takes time and it could bring you to..right around 5. Okay, so maybe I was wrong, but I needed to talk through the time lapse.

Here''s a question though: What about having an early dinner? I don''t know how your family celebrates, but on holidays, my family eats dinner at "odd" times (around 4). I don''t see anything wrong with that. I do think that it''s definitely appropriate to feed your guests a complete meal, especially since everyone will be coming from out of town.

I''d probably opt to have an early dinner, but that''s just me.