Ceremony Start Time

For me, we went to a wedding where dinner was early enough but cake & the couples first dance were at the same time of the evening, well not evening it was night. They started their dance @ 9:50. It was so late, I was exhausted after sitting outside, getting through dinner and such but we really wanted to be there for the first dance so we stuck it out. To be fair though their ceremony was like 3:30 or 4 or something like that I don’t quite remember b I personally would be fine taking a 2pm ceremony (ours is going to be 3pm) and you can either take an hour or 2 break/“rest” which gives people time to go back to a hotel and freshen up before heading to the reception since they have to “travel” to the next part anyways. Then you have time to take pictures and get to the reception with no problem.

I would think the earlier option would be fine. OOT guests will know the time to arrive and some hotels will make allowances for check in a bit earlier (depending on where). Plus luggage can be stored until hotel check in.

I agree with Mariah on the taking the "rest" time to allow for freshening up and checking on by guests. And eating at 9:30pm typically isn't something someone who has been up for a while wants to do. If people know there is a later reception and plated dinner they may be super hungry, and I personally don't like to eat a large meal that late in the evening.

Black tie optional really isn't a dress code. It's either black tie or it's not. Also, black tie doesn't apply to a daytime wedding.

Neither of your options is ideal. The evening wedding will mean that your guests won't have eaten since lunch and they'll be starving even before your ceremony starts. An afternoon ceremony with a multi hour gap isn't good for guests. There's nothing worse than having to waste a couple of hours before heading to a wedding reception. Wedding day events need to smoothly flow into each other without any gaps other than necessary travel gaps from ceremony to reception.

Are you dead set on getting married in this church? I know a lot of people are set on their church, and that's cool, just thought I'd ask. If not, the problem is eliminated!

I think the question you need to ask is what will work better with your crowd? For us, late night would be great. We usually eat dinner around 9 p.m. anyway, and my FH and I both have worked nights, so we're on that schedule. But if your social group isn't made up of night owls, you could have a problem on your hands.

A large gap isn't really ideal, either. How long is the ceremony? Is it traditional Catholic? 30 minutes, an hour? If the ceremony ends at 3 p.m., you could potentially have guests arrive at the reception venue by 3:30, and serve finger foods, then start cocktail hour at 4 and maybe stretch that to an hour and a half. By the time you do your entrance and all, people would be eating around 6 p.m., which is pretty normal.

People aren't likely going to want to change between the ceremony and the reception, by the way, so you can't really have two separate dress codes. I'm not a huge fan of dress requirements for weddings in the first place, and I know a lot of people say you can't tell people how to dress, but to be honest, if it was a formal (long dress) wedding, I'd want to know beforehand, via the website or something. I don't want to feel stupid wearing my short, floral wedding guest dress to a formal party!

If it means anything to you, we're getting married at 1 p.m., and I'm starting my HMU at 10 a.m. It really doesn't take that long. If you have a lot of other people getting made up and such, you may want to hire several HMU artists, that way you don't have to get up so early. And with the earlier wedding time, my OOT guests will be arriving the day before. That eliminates the check in problem

Best of luck!

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Both hotels don't guarantee check-in prior to the ceremony so that would leave people having to get ready for a wedding in a bathroom.

No one that I have asked that's coming to the wedding would rather freshen up and have specifically said if there's a gap they would rather be fed then go freshen up. I know 9:30 pm is late and the last thing I would want would be for guests to be starving, but my thought process was that they would have also just shown up for a 7:30 pm wedding ceremony two hours earlier. If it wasn't against church rules to eat within the hour of a mass I would have hors' deouvres at the church prior to the ceremony :-P. You do bring up a good point, people may hold back on snacking prior to because of the plated meal, but I would think they would get that initial starvation satisfied with cocktail hour.

I will provide additional food for the bridesmaids while we all get ready together since they would have been up for a while.

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Black tie was also semi-formal attire in the early 1900's with only white tie acceptable as formal wedding attire, while now days black tie is formal attire. Black tie optional means 'black tie' for women and the 'optional' only applies to the men. Black tie optional wasn't a dress code in the early 1900s, but now days it is commonly used for weddings and at the venue. It suggests that it is also acceptable for men to wear a dark suit, dark tie and white shirt.

No, black-tie is not appropriate for a daytime wedding (though if requested by the bride it should be followed), but it would be for our evening reception.

In my initial post I did mention that if we did the 2 pm ceremony I would provide food immediately following the ceremony at the reception location as a prelude to cocktail hour so people who don't have anything to do would have somewhere to go and something to eat.

No one wants to sit for a 3 hour cocktail hour. And it makes no sense to tell women they must be in formal evening gowns, but the men are fine in a regular suit. You should have found a reception space where you could have gone into cocktail hour immediately following the ceremony (let’s say 3:30) and then served dinner around 5. Or you could have found a church to have your ceremony at 4.

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Pictures were my initial reason for wanting to select the 2 pm ceremony and not having to do a 'first look'. I also don't mind a break, but everyone that's coming that I have asked would rather be fed over freshening up.

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They wouldn't have to sit for a 3 hour cocktail hour. They can do whatever it is they would like during the two hour break and come to the actual 'cocktail hour'. Black-tie doesn't require a gown, that's 'white tie'. A formal knee-length cocktail dress can also be worn for a black-tie event. Also, typically if the woman is dressing up, her partner would match accordingly.

I can serve dinner at whatever time I would like, but everyone I talk to above all really dislikes weddings that are over by 8:30 pm/9 pm on a Saturday.

My start time is pretty late and the reception gets over at 12 am but I'm hoping everyone's okay with a late dinner and really late dessert!

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I was not dead set, but it was in my top two and he wasn't a fan of my third option, which has a 7 pm. Our other option wouldn't reveal if the date is even available and they make you go through orientation along with several other steps before having the ability to find out directly from the priest.

The immediate family and most of the bridal party eat late and we are night owls. We often eat at 9/9:30 pm and even choose 10:15 pm dinner reservations. The ceremony would be traditional catholic with mass and it would be an hour long. I agree about people not wanting to change and that's why I was thinking to do the later ceremony, which was our original plan. I've seen where the evening dress code is set black tie optional, by default creating two different dress codes and the people who don't want to change would wear something that would also fit the later dress code. For example, women wearing a knee-length formal dress and men wearing a dark suit/tie that's not black to the ceremony that would also be fine as black tie optional.

The issue with starting cocktail hour at 4 pm is that we would only be able to serve alcohol until 9 pm. Due to Texas state law we can't serve alcohol for more than 5 hours. If people flew in on Friday they would most likely have to leave work early and I didn't want to add that headache into the mix for non-bridal party guests.

FYI I had a Catholic ceremony with a full mass and it ended up being more like an hour and fifteen minutes - an hour and a half, plus more time for pictures on the altar! We chose to have a 3 pm ceremony instead of a 7 pm ceremony for that reason. Not sure if that extra half an hour makes a difference, but I wouldn't necessarily count on it being right at an hour or under. We also had less than half of our guests taking Communion, so it would have been even longer if my husband's family had also been Catholic.

View Quoted Comment If everyone you’re talking to that is invited to the wedding is saying they don’t want it to be over that early then do the 7:30. If you do that it’s best to do a first look bc you likely won’t have enough light for outdoor pics so if you’re ok with in the church then by all means 7:30 quick pics in the church & then to dinner is fine, but if you want outside pics/ no first look then the 2pm is best. It sounds like so far all your guests are leaning towards 7:30 but you sound like you’d rather have the earlier so it sounds like you’re in a pickle...

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I have heard of much longer ceremonies from the wedding planner and I am curious, did the church tell you it was an hour with mass when you met with them? Our wedding guidelines state that adding Holy Communion adds approximately 10 minutes depending on the number of people. Also, did you pick really long verses, add a presentation to Mary, add the unity candle? The church only allows 20 minutes of pictures following the ceremony so with an evening ceremony the plan would be to arrive at the venue at the end of the shortened cocktail hour.

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I am very torn because the 2 pm is better for pictures, but the 7:30 pm would have a better flow and both inconvenience guests in different ways.

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The priest told us an hour to an hour and ten minutes depending on the number of people who took communion. He also told us that it would only add 10 minutes but I feel like it took longer than that to do all of the preparation, prayers, and procession for communion! Don't get me wrong -- I loved that we did it and definitely wouldn't have changed it, but it did add some time. We actually didn't have anything extra -- I picked the shortest readings, and we didn't do the candle or presentation to Mary!

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I love late dinners, I would just offer plenty of food during the cocktail hour. Also, people in the northeast are more accustomed to partying first and eating dinner later. In Texas it is more common to eat first and earlier.

What did you end up doing, Maureen? I'm doing black tie for the reception but my church only has a 2 o'clock ceremonies available for weddings. Also, my mom is a Eucharist minister there so the church is non-negotiable.

After an hour ceremony and 30 min shuffling around, the trolleys will get the guests back to the hotel at 4, and then I will have an hour dead time for guest to change/freshen up before cocktail hour at 5. Then the black tie masquerade reception starts at 6.

Personally, I would LOVE to have two outfits to get to wear to a wedding...but I know I'm not the majority here. Through my research a lot of people do change in between for afternoon church ceremonies...but then I found this thread and I'm back to questioning it all.