How long is your wedding?

While that is on the shorter end of receptions, that's pretty standard for most weddings.

Some religious ceremonies are longer than 30 minutes, but most civil ones are about 30 minutes.

Cocktail hour is aptly named, and receptions can be anywhere from 3-5 hours long.

Agree with the PP. Plus, I think a 40 person group lends itself well to a shorter reception time. Certain things will naturally move faster - e.g. it’ll be quicker for everyone to get seated, dinner service won’t take as long - and I feel like a crowd of that size is less suited to hours of dancing.

I don’t know if that is normal but my wedding will be the same.. 30 min ceremony. 1 hour cocktail and 3 hour reception 🙌🏻✨

Hey Alexandra due to budget I cut my reception time off . I have 40 guest as well . Destination wedding . Time line is ceremony 6-630 cocktail 6:45-7:45 plated dinner and some dancing 7:45-9:45 . I won’t have a bridal party nor I’m doing the garter toss or bouquet. My fiancé isn’t much of a dancer . We got a dj for mainly our guest LOL

Normal is 30 minute ceremony 1 hour cocktail 4 hour reception

We're planning a 65-person wedding. Ceremony at 530, cocktail hour 6-7, reception 7-12. I expect most people will leave by 11, but there was no difference in price to keep our DJ that long so my FH are just going to chill with our friends until midnight!

I’m doing a micro wedding for 4 hrs 5pm to 9pm. And that’s with ceremony, cocktail hours, and reception! For a small gathering your time is accurate. Most places offer 5 hrs event time but you have option to have access to the venue for most of the day. Longest I’ve seen offered is 7 hrs so 5pm start time and end time is midnight.

Our guest list is 193, and our ceremony will start at 3:30. Ceremony will last about 25-30min. Cocktail hour, an hour, then the reception will start around 5pm and we get our venue till 11pm!

Definitely a normal amount of time for that many people!

I think 3 hour reception sounds kind of short but if you don't plan on having dancing or having other things like garter toss, speeches, etc then that should actually be ok! especially cause you have a cocktail hour

A standard nonreligious ceremony is 30 minutes. A dessert/tea reception with no dancing is the shortest at 2 hrs. So I would be surprised how one can fit 2 hrs of dinner, 2 hrs of dancing plus festivities into a 3-4 hr slot which is the minimum/maximum at many venues, which many include ceremony in that time frame as well. .

Also bear in mind that countless brides say the day is a blur because everything goes so fast and they barely to see people who have travelled from out of state. It's really no wonder when you're not allowed much time to celebrate anyway once you get to the venue. Fortunately for that reason many blank slate venues have 12 hr minimums and some with no curfew to allow for a longer party.

For that reason we are planning to start at 2pm ceremony which is common for us with no gap, and party as long as possible in the same venue until they kick us out. (don't get the partying elsewhere afterwards concept) and our friends and family said they can't wait to enjoy a wedding that won't feel rushed.

Ours is 5 and a half hrs. but we have stuff planned for the whole time too

We had around the same numbers as you, but we had a 30-minute ceremony (really 20 minutes but started 10 minutes late because the officiant's daughter was late and he wanted to wait for her), 1 and a half hour cocktail "hour" and then 2.5 hours for the reception. We just did a dinner with three speeches, no dancing and that was the perfect amount of time.

Ours is from 3:30pm to 9:45pm, so 6ish hours.

Ceremony 3:30 - 4:00
Cocktail hour 4:00 - 5:00
Reception 5:00 - 9:45

How wedding from start to finish was 5 hrs long.

Typo **our

My venue is all inclusive for 6hours. Ceremony is 30mins cocktail is an hour, reception is 4 and a half. So seems normal to me.


I did find a venue where they did a 30minute ceremony and an hour and a half "reception" I thought it was rather odd and moved along.