HELP! Wedding is at unexpected time

christinacmarie

I want to get married at my alma mater's chapel. The problem is, they only have 12pm available for my selected wedding date! And they don't have a 5 pm slot available until Sept. 10th 2011.... that's way too far from what I want!

So for now, my wedding is at 12 pm on July 9th. I'm freaking out because I don't know what time I should have my reception at!!!!

How will I make everything work now? I don't want to make my guests wait 2+ hours between the ceremony and reception. UGH!

Should I just give up and try to find another location for my wedding?

-flustered bride

Aimee8314

do you have a location for the reception?  Is it indoors?  Is it air conditioned?  Why not serve lunch?  I don't think anyone would side-eye you for doing an afternoon ceremony/lunch reception.  I think people would be more likely to be annoyed if you had a huge lag between the ceremony and an evening reception - just because you wanted the evening reception.

I think you'll have to choose what's the most important thing.  The chapel or an evening reception.

christinacmarie

Thank you for the response.
I've calmed down considerably. I guess I just always imagined having an evening reception. A late lunch reception isn't so bad....right?

It will probably end around 5 or so. That seems a bit early to me!

anglyn

I  would have your wedding at noon and then your reception right after. Not a lot of people like breaks. Most often they will choose to go to one thing or the other. Your reception doesn't have to be at night. A lot of people don't really stay all that late at weddings anyways - especially if they travel. So by having it early, you won't really have to worry about people leaving early. 

vb0000

The first venue I had chosen presented me with this problem....early daytime wedding with lunch reception.  But I really started warming up to this idea when I figured out that I could have a fun, casual "after party" later with just our closest friends/family.  I had planned to have this at a local billards bar/restaurant where they would also set up a casual tri-tip sandwich buffet for us...later in the evening this place even had live music - bonus!

But then we decided after adding up and totaling ALL costs for the day that it was much cheaper just to go with an evening ceremony and reception.  We had to put off our wedding an extra month to get the evening time we wanted which was disappointing at first but it's working out fine now. 

September 2011 is really not as far away as you think.  If you're planning a huge reception and/or a lot of DIY stuff you may be grateful that you had the extra time for planning, etc. 

It really just depends on how you think you will want to remember your ceremony....will you always regret that you didn't have the evening ceremony?  Most likely you won't regret it, you will just be happy that you are married.  But factor in all pieces - cost, emotions, DIY stuff, COSTS, etc, and then decide.