Church ceremony

It depends on what kind of wedding you want and when you want it to end. If you want an evening wedding, I would go with a 5 pm ceremony, that puts cocktail hour at 5:30 to 6:30 (ish) and a typical 4 hour reception would be 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm.

What time do you want the wedding to be over? I would pick that time and then start 5-6 hours before then. I would serve dinner sometime between 5 and 7 at the latest.

A large part of this can factor into: how long will the ceremony be? Are you wanting to dance all night or have an earlier dinner/celebration?

Typically, I would think a ceremony time between 3-5 pm would be great for this church ceremony. Considering time to travel to the reception location, have cocktail hour, then begin the reception (this could be dinner, cake, toasts, dancing or any variation of that timeline), I feel like I thought about this working backwards from the time you want dinner to be! We had our ceremony at 5pm which was perfect timing for us, but our ceremony and reception were at the same venue so there was no additional travel time

Maybe 3 or 4pm? Also depends how far your reception venue is from the church. I’d be sure to serve the first course of dinner by like 6, maybe 6:30 at the latest. I’ve been to weddings where dinner isn’t served until 7 and that’s ok too but people are usually pretty hungry by then.


So like say you wanted to serve dinner at 6... assume you have cocktail hour maybe 4:30-5:30pm, start your reception at 5:30 and serve dinner at 6... so figure out how far your venues are from each other, for you to arrive to the reception venue by 4:30. And figure out what time to start the ceremony based on that.

How long will the ceremony be? I'd say start the ceremony between 3-5.

View Quoted Comment Thank you! It’s a Christian ceremony, they last like 40 minutes. And also it’s going to be a dry wedding so I am not sure what time for dinner or ceremony?

View Quoted Comment Are you having a cocktail hour to serve hors douvres? Or just going straight from the ceremony to the reception?

Are you having a dance? If not, I would say ceremony at 4, dinner afterwards then people can leave or people can stay for a dance. If it is a dry wedding, skip the cocktail hour (this is a new trend, lol) as people will expect.....a cocktail!

View Quoted Comment Thank you all for responding at my questions. I am having a dry wedding and no party it’s a Christian wedding. So, it’s just the ceremony in the church and a celebration dinner.

Church Cermony Can be held a few hours before the actuall cermony
For example. Chruch Cermony can began at 4pm and actual reception can take place ar 6pm. This is just an example. We wouldn't want our guest waiting around. Then it also depends upon how long it will take to do the cermony as well.