Timing question

dls.1215

Ok so I have been going back and forth over this MANY times. Our ceremony is in Manchester at 12PM. Assuming it is a 30-40 minute ceremony and there is about 15 - 25 minute drive to the reception, I had put the reception to start at 1. However in thinking about it, I don't think people are going to make it there til at least after 1 if not 130. Soooo should I push the reception back a half our and possibly have a 10-15 minute gap? Or should I leave the reception as is and have people not show up until 15 minutes after it "starts". My main concern with people arriving after our time "starts" is it will seem like the reception is cut short because our 5 hours will have started before people actually arrived...

Gabs71109

I guess I would get a better idea of ceremony time. You don't want too much of a gap. 30-40 minutes leaves 10 minutes of uncertainty - 10 minutes can mean a lot to "waiting" guests. That being said, I would probably still push it to 1:30 - some of your guests may have a hard time finding the venue or need to make a stop along the way. PLUS, even if you are not doing a receiving line folks will probably stick around a bit to catch a glimpse of you and DH getting pictures done.

[Deleted User]

I agree with Gabs.  It's not like you're having the huge 4 hour Catholic gap and really inconvenience people.  I think you would be fine starting at 1:30p and getting your money's worth!

candi516

I also agree with Gabs and YB. I think pushing it to 130 is a great idea and won't leave too much time for waiting and also won't cut the reception short.

Steffy3217

Don't worry too much about guests waiting around. Our ceremony ended up being WAY shorter than we had planned and our guests were 1/2 hour early to the reception hall and they accomodated us just fine. I wouldn't want to lose time though.

ninnypooper

I think a big determination would be whether or not you're doing a receiving line. If I recall you aren't doing a full mass and neither did we, and I think our ceremony was still like 45 minutes (YB or Candi would know better). We did pictures outside and no receiving line but EVERYONE stuck around. After a while we did a shot with the guests since they were just standing there, then I continued to try and tell people to leave. LoL. We did our ceremony at 5:30pm and started the reception at 7:00pm (it was a 1/2 hour drive).HTH!

[Deleted User]

Yeah, I think Ninny's ceremony was about 40 minutes all told, and we lingered around watching the posed pics outside the church.  Somehow we ended up behind the limo taking her to the reception, even though we left well before she did!