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Wedding Reception Forum
plainolmccarty
member
Something to do between wedding and reception?
Hi all,
My FI and I need your help: we have a three-hour window after the ceremony and before the reception when our wedding party will be getting pictures done and cruising around town in a trolley. Does anyone have fun, creative ideas for what guests can do during this time? We'd like to give them some options so they aren't bored! Thank you
My FI and I need your help: we have a three-hour window after the ceremony and before the reception when our wedding party will be getting pictures done and cruising around town in a trolley. Does anyone have fun, creative ideas for what guests can do during this time? We'd like to give them some options so they aren't bored! Thank you
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Re: Something to do between wedding and reception?
"If wine is getting in the way of your work, get rid of the work."
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It's actually rather rude to leave a three hour window in between the ceremony and reception.
I understand that you probably have a big gap between your ceremony and reception because you have an early afternoon ceremony and want an evening reception. I'm stuck in a similar situation, but with a smaller gap (about 1:45 between ceremony and reception, and a 30 minute drive).
There's probably no way to get rid of the gap entirely, but I would try to move the cocktail hour/reception an hour earlier so the gap isn't so huge.
I'll echo Banana that it would be nice to set up a hospitality room at the hotel or ask a relative to have a small open house where guests can have refreshments and kill time. I'm not that far along in the planning, but I'm hoping one of FI's relatives who lives near our reception and the hotel for OOT guests will have people at their house.
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I guess it comes down to whether it is unavoidable or a choice to have the gap.
If it is important to you to both be married by the Catholic church and take your guests' comfort into account, you will. Yes, family weddings tend to have early bird dinners and end a little on the earlier side. Once you're inside, no one realizes that and it doesn't create any less of a celebratory atmosphere.
OP, with that long of a gap, I would skip the ceremony if I were traveling, either the ceremony or reception if it were local, or both. Negotiate with your venues to see if you can close that gap at all. You don't need 3 hours for pictures and cruising.
Planning/Married Biology
Yes, some places are inflexible but not ALL places are inflexible. You can't call it a 'fact' as if this is something that you need to deal with. I had a 2 PM wedding w/ a reception that began at 4 (long winded priest and 20 minute drive meant no gap) and a 6 hour reception so it was definitely an evening party.
I'm not saying that dealing with the gap isn't common - but it's not something that is a definite. And in dealing WITH the gap, you still need to be courteous to your guests and provide them with something DURING that gap. They're still your guests while you're taking photos so it's not OK to leave them with nothing hosted.
[QUOTE]. I'm not saying that dealing with the gap isn't common - but it's not something that is a definite. And in dealing WITH the gap, you still need to be courteous to your guests and provide them with something DURING that gap. They're still your guests while you're taking photos so it's not OK to leave them with nothing hosted.
Posted by banana468[/QUOTE]<div>
</div><div>This. Well said banana. I am having a 3p wedding and starting my reception at 4:30p, so it will still be an evening wedding. I looked around at a lot of churches and venues to try to avoid the gap - so it CAN be done.
</div>
If you have a gap, you must host something during the break. A hospitality suite at a hotel, a private room in a restaurant, or someone's house is fine. But you can't expect your guests to come to your ceremony and then go find something to do until you are ready to host them at the reception.
So unless you want a casual dress code for the ceremony so your guests are using that time to go home and change, I'd strongly consider closing that gap. We're using the time between lunch and the ceremony to take pictures on the Strip so we can go immediately from the ceremony to the reception.
As a local guest faced with a three hour gap, I'd just attend the reception, because I wouldn't want to give up my entire day just to sit around for several hours. If I had to travel for it, I'd think twice about attending at all.
This is a belated married bio, with no reviews yet because I'm lazy.
Sometimes I feel like people think that brides are delicate little flower princesses who get all dressed up and pretty for one special moment of their dreams, when really they're just normal people who just happen to be getting married. Things shouldn't have to be sugar-coated for grown-ass women. -mstar284
40/112
3 hours is way too long and I think you will probably lose a lot of guests (or at least tick them off). If there is anything you can do to significantly shorten that time, I would recommend it. Someone else here made a good point that you could try to come up with ideas around the city to do, but if your guests are dressed up, they probably aren't going to want to be tourists for those 3 hours.
If you care enough about people to invite them to your wedding, you should care enough about them to make them comfortable. Leaving a gap does not make them comfortable, and will make them think less of you. Putting your guests out to attend your wedding is not ok.
If it's rude, it's rude in New York, LA, and Minnesota. My Catholic family that are horrified by gaps are in Kentucky. Hardly the center of the universe. But even they know when someone just invited them for the gift and could give a hoot if they are taken care of.
Cocktail hours were invented for a reason. Your guests get to socialize while you are off doing pictures. I didn't see my DH before the ceremony, and I managed to do tons of pictures while guests were at the cocktail hour. It isn't that hard to take care of your guests. It's shameful how many brides just don't care.
[QUOTE]IMO a 3 hour gap is way too long. Did you put any though into getting pictures done and cruising around town in a trolle y before your ceremony????
Posted by ~mRm~[/QUOTE]
<div>Just thought that I would point out that if she is having a Catholic ceremony, her and her FI are not ALLOWED to see each other before the ceremony.</div><div>
</div><div>This message board is suppose to be about helping each other out, if you can't help then move on. But stop bashing each other!</div>
To PP who said this:
In Response to Re: Something to do between wedding and reception? : Just thought that I would point out that if she is having a Catholic ceremony, her and her FI are not ALLOWED to see each other before the ceremony. This message board is suppose to be about helping each other out, if you can't help then move on. But stop bashing each other!
Posted by felicia220
That's flat out not true. Even if they weren't able to see each other before the ceremony, taking three hours for photos borders on the absurd.
I am having my ceremony and reception at the same location. I am having a 1.5 hour gap. I have 10 people total in my wedding party. (so it might take a while to get picture I want). I also agree that cocktail HOUR is just that, an HOUR!!! I haven't seen a lot of my family, let alone any of his family, in a long time. I believe that since it is a wedding and you normally don't see family from other stated, they will stay for your special day and for free food!!! Once you arrive and the food and music start, people will forget about the wait and just enjoy themselves. Also, once you show your family the gorgeous pictures a month later, it will all be worth it.
The cocktail hour is perfect and part of the reception. If you're taking photos and leaving your guests with nothing to do,....then that sucks.
to the PP....I've done the bar hopping....and that evening reception was a drag. Our entire table was drunk and just wanted to go home and pass out. Longest night ever. Never again.
[QUOTE] I realize that I will sound like an silly country bumpkin, but in the mid-west, things are done a lot differently. Most weddings here have a gap, Catholic or not, because most of brides choose to stay traditional and not see the groom until the ceremony. My wedding is going to have a 2 hour gap. We'll take the pictures that we can beforehand and then shoot the ones that involve both of us after the ceremony, and then have a quick outdoor shoot. Posted by bdrullinger[/QUOTE]
<strong>Things aren't done that differently in the mid-west; manners are still important here too,</strong> and a three hour gap is disrespectful to your guests and rude.
I did wedding catering for two years when I was in college; two hours is pushing it and a majority of weddings had a gap - the hour to hour and a half MAX for the cocktail hour. I have witnessed way too many unhappy guests when the bridal party is gone that long. People may say that it's okay now, but when they are waiting for dinner and the hor d'ouvre trays are gone, it is too long. On top of that for brides who don't plan and show up an hour late after the cocktail hour without pre-planning with caterers, deserve the dry crappy looking food that was prepared over an hour prior to their indiscretions.
It's extremely important to my FH (oddly enough not me) that the first time he sees me is when I'm walking down the aisle. We will have an hour of pictures after our ceremony. I intend on hiring a good photographer who can handle that limitation. If I need more pictures after that we will take them at another time after the wedding.
bdrullinger, I don't understand your animosity towards the coasts, and found your comments to be terse. I am okay with the fact that all the "jazz" as you put it isn't who I am, you sound bitter... I am a mid-west girl through and through living modestly like you are - I bought my dress for about that much too, that doesn't mean I've given up any sense of the mid-west niceties I was taught. Were the additional comments necessary or could you have kept your comments on the topic at hand?
[QUOTE]Okay Obviously most of you have not been a part of wedding pictures before.
Posted by felicia220[/QUOTE]
<em>"And then the left half of the brain looks and the right half and says 'It's dark in here ... and we may die'."</em>
If you fire a WP member, you're against America.
"Meg cracks me up on the regular. Now she gets to do it in two different forums. Yay!!" ~mkrupar
Yeah - I have yet to find a photographer who 'needs' three hours for the photos.
If he does, you hired a rather bad one.
We had 20 mins of photos in chapel (only b/g and wedding party) and then did maybe a 10 minutes of fam photos outside. I was exhausted from that. I could not imagine doing an hour.
I was in a wedding this summer where the reception hall had a lovely lawn overlooking the river; about an hour-ish into the reception, the couple and WP slipped away for about 20-30 minutes to take some fun shots. It worked out great and the shots turned out gorgeous because everyone was so relaxed, knowing that we didn't have people waiting on us to finish up. If your pictures are going to take a really long time, you probably don't have a very good photographer.
This is a belated married bio, with no reviews yet because I'm lazy.
Sometimes I feel like people think that brides are delicate little flower princesses who get all dressed up and pretty for one special moment of their dreams, when really they're just normal people who just happen to be getting married. Things shouldn't have to be sugar-coated for grown-ass women. -mstar284
I understand the gap between a Catholic ceremony and the reception, I really do, I know that the church has weird times and most reception venues won't let you start until a certain time, I looked into all of this for my own wedding, because I am Catholic. In the end, I personally (DH is a Buddhist, so he left this decision entirely up to me, he said he would have done whatever I wanted for this) decided getting married in the church was not important enough to me. The single most important thing about my ceremony, when I sat down and prioritized, was that I would be legally married at the end of the day.
I chose not to have a church wedding because I loved the idea of having everything in one spot, which would make it easier to keep people in one place, and let DH's family start drinking ASAP (Which is what they need to have a good time anywhere). I gaurantee if we had a gap where there was an option for the guests to get a bar crawl in, his entire side never would have made it to the reception.
Not everybody can make the decision I made, I don't judge people for having the religious ceremonies or opting for the Catholic mass ceremony, and I don't judge for gaps that are creating strictly by the Catholic ceremony times. If you choose a church wedding, that's just a hit you have to take.
However.
OP has made it clear that part of this gap (If not all, since she never specified if this gap was created due to ceremony times conflicting with the start of the reception or not) is due to her pretty much going on a spree with her BP for pics. If As a guest, if I knew the bride was doing this, I'd most likely be only attending one event that day, because I'd be pretty ticked off that the bride was off taking hours of pictures and trolley touring while I was stuck with nothing to do in a strange town while in my dress clothes.
If you fire a WP member, you're against America.
"Meg cracks me up on the regular. Now she gets to do it in two different forums. Yay!!" ~mkrupar