Is anyone having a reception longer than 5 hours?

Mine will be potentially 6-7 hours. Ceremony and reception in the same place, and have the venue until 11.30pm. 4 hours is way too short!! 😱

Mine is 6 hours including cocktail hour. I know it’s going to fly by!

I know someone having a reception from 5p to 1a!

Our ceremony started at 5, we had a cocktail hour from after the ceremony until roughly 7, and we were done by 11.

It was a blast, but... we were *exhausted* after. Like, I couldn't even be bothered to change out of my dress until we got home and I left it on a chair for *days* exhausted.

After-parties are great, but make sure you're up to the marathon.

Ours might run for 6 hours including cocktail hour. Time does go by but I also heard that it gets pretty tiring once you leave so I guess just make sure that you're actually using the entire time you pay for.

Our reception was 3.5 hours plus a 1 hour cocktail hour, and honestly I don’t think another hour or so would’ve even made a difference. It’s not that it goes by “fast,” it’s just that there’s so much you want to do you can’t possibly have time for it all. Even if you were to extend the reception, odds are many people would leave early then and you still wouldn’t get to spend that extra time with “everyone.”



My advice is to plan other things during that weekend where you can see other people! For example, our wedding was Sunday, and by the time of the wedding we had already spent Thursday evening, Friday afternoon, Friday evening, and Saturday at the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner with many of our out of town relatives and our bridal parties. I barely talked to my cousins at the wedding because I had already spent several days with them! But like, if I hadn’t done that, I still don’t think an extra hour at the reception would’ve been enough time with them, you know? Plus, we had a lunch wedding so after the wedding we went to dinner with a group of friends, and then a few friends hung out in our hotel room with us until midnight.

We didn’t get to spend more time with “everyone,” but honestly that’s never possible hahaha. I found the best way to balance our time was to just spend as much time with as many different groups of people as possible, aside from the actual wedding itself. That really made a difference in us feeling like we actually got to spend genuine time enjoying our friends and family.

We'll have a cocktail hour 5-6 and a reception 6-10. For most of our family, that will be enough and they'll go home. Others will choose to stay for our after party, but we're honestly planning on the after party being more the bridal party and our parents.

Yes, it's your wedding and you want the party to go on forever, but I've never heard guests say "wow I wish I could party for 3 more hours." It's your wedding and no one will be as excited about it as you will be, so you could be disappointed if you plan an 8 hour party and no one stays/has full energy until the end.

Our ceremony will start at 3, there will be 1 hour of cocktail and the reception ends at 11pm. We will have an after party afterwards for our closest friends and immediate family. Since the search for our venue we knew we wanted one with everything in one location or ceremony and venue are in one location and on that same 70 acre lot there’s a house we rented for two nights in order to enjoy our wedding weekend some more. The after party will be held at this house


I think it’s all up to your personal presence. For us if we are spending a lot of money on our wedding we felt we wanted to last longer and really make the best out of it along with our families

We're planning on only having a 5 hour reception as we'll be leaving the next day on our honeymoon. However with no real planned "ending" of our reception, if people still seem to be having a good time 5 hours after start of the reception I don't see us making people leave 🤣

Our cocktail/reception is gonna be from 6-11 and then we are having an afterparty at a smaller bar in the same building from 11pm-2am. After that the party will likely move to the houses we rented. My family parties all night so I have to build my stamina lol!

Daughter & SIL's reception, including cocktail hour was 6 hrs. Guests stayed till the very end, but there was no after party -- they'd been up since 6 am, and with their respective wedding parties getting ready since 10-11 am -- so they were definitely done at the end of the night. However, we did host a rehearsal/welcome dinner for the wedding party, families and all out-of-town guests on Thursday night (Saturday afternoon/evening wedding). And MUCH of that group spent time together on Friday in various subgroupings. For a while we considered a brunch for Sunday, but some OOT guests were flying out on Sunday morning and/or had other plans, so we scrapped that plan. I think the B&G felt like they got to spend time with a lot of people (some of the wedding party and OOT guests arrived as early as the Sunday prior to the wedding) and it was a super-fun and exciting week, but by the time it was over, they were exhausted and ready for some alone/down time before they left for their minimoon.

We’ll be at an all-inclusive so our private cocktail hour + reception is 5-11 pm and we’ll go to the bar after with anyone who’s down!