Our ceremony begins at 11:30 am. We're not having a cocktail hour and we're trying to decide what time to tell the caterer to serve the meal for. Our ceremony will last approx 20 minutes, we'll be having about 60 guests and it's a served meal. The reason we opted out of the cocktail hour is because we figure there will be enough sunshine left to get our pictures afterwards, however I've been debating whether or not to try and get some shots between the ceremony and meal. Our photographer suggests minimum of 1.5-2 hours total for formal shots (seems like so long!) but I don't want our guests sitting around waiting. Would it be rude of us to leave the reception building after the meal to get a few shots in before heading back to mingle? Or should we hold off completely until guests are leaving? We're not doing dancing, garter toss, cake toss, speeches, etc. Pretty much just eat, mingle, and enjoy the time together. I'm thinking everyone might be gone by around 2ish. Is this too rushed?
What time should we serve the meal? We'll have a couple of fruit and veggie trays put out for immediately after the ceremony (not a lot, just 1 xtra large of each, meant to serve 50-60 each) but I'm unsure how long it'll take people to get from the ceremony building to the reception building. It's on the same property, only about 300 feet apart but I don't know if people will think it's time to mingle or not... OMG so many little details.
I just want our guests to feel comfortable and everything to run smoothly, not make guests feel rushed or anything.
