I'm going to make this long story as short as possible.
My partner and I thought we found our officiant, we made our plans and timelines, got our invitations, then she fell through. No problem we thought, worse case scenario we just have a friend get ordained and marry us. Not ideal, but cheap and it will be very personal. So we sent off our invitations advertising our wedding as this October at three o'clock. Then we got back to reaching out to officiants. I've reached out to dozens at this point, no luck, everyone is booked. So many people bumped their 2020 weddings So we started looking seriously into having a friend marry us. And it turns out our state doesn't recognize online officiants.
We finally found one officiant that would travel to us. It would be $950 dollars, plus his hotel fees.
Then our first choice reached back out to us letting us know that her other wedding turns out to be ten minutes from our venue. This couple is getting married at 4 o'clock. She said she would be willing to make both weddings work if we can adjust our time slightly. We have a meeting scheduled with her to discuss timelines and flexibility. Now my partner and I are debating having our ceremony slightly earlier (maybe 2:30), extending our cocktail hour slightly, and keeping the rest of our evening timeline the same. But, we aren't sure how difficult it will be to inform all our guests of the change. We aren't sure it is worth the hassle?
People have had their invitations for about a week or two now. Should we send out little business card "change the time" cards and inform people of the change? Is it even worth the stress of trying to change our time to fit an officiant or should we just bite the bullet and go with our second choice, more expensive option?
I'm in desperate need to hear other opinions. Has anyone here changed their wedding time, but not the date?