Hi everybody,
I just had a heated argument with my mom about the time frame of our wedding. Here's what we have planned as of now.
I am getting ready at my mom's house in Roxbury.
Our ceremony is at my church in Basking Ridge at 1pm (30 minutes from Roxbury), followed by pictures.
The reception is at David's Country Inn in Hackettstown (40 - 45 minutes from Basking Ridge)
We do not want first look pictures ... because we don't.
We want to have a private cocktail hour for 1/2 the time, and then join our guests for the rest.
The hotel is about 30 - 40 minutes from the church, but 15 minutes from the reception hall.
We want to take pictures in and around the church (there is a cute little park across the street) for about an hour and then also at David's Country Inn.
Guests can check into the hotel in between the ceremony and the reception. There will be a hospitality area available for them to hang out, grab a drink and relax before catching the shuttle to the reception.
We currently have the ceremony scheduled at 1pm and the reception at 5:30pm. This gives us approximately 1:00 to 1:25 to take pictures in Basking Ridge, 45 minutes to drive to Hackettstown and then 1:00 - 1:25 to take pictures at the reception site. With a little bit of wiggle room in case things don't go exactly according to plan ... and maybe a little time to relax thrown in there.
- My mom is saying this is inconsiderate to our guests and we need to move the time of the ceremony by 1 or 2 hours so that the guests don't have to wait.
- She is insisting that the cocktail hour (and reception) is not for us, but a "thank you" for our guests, and that it's ok if we miss most of the cocktail hour to take pictures ... even though that's not what we want.
- She is insisting that we do first look pictures, which we don't want, and get all family group pictures done before the ceremony (which she claims is a NJ tradition).
- She is insisting that asking guests to "spin their wheels" in a hospitality suite will get the party started, and everybody will eat and drink before the reception and come to the reception completely obliterated.
- She takes issue with asking our guests who decide to come to the ceremony to spend 12 hours (including getting ready) all dressed up for our wedding.
- She thinks that the time span in between would cause us to lose guests - they will either go to the ceremony OR the reception, but not both. We tried to explain to her that going to only the reception is normal for people who aren't family and extremely close friends. And I've never heard of invited guests ONLY going to the ceremony.
The issue is that my mother is thinking my fiance and I are being inconsiderate to our guests and would have us change everything about our timeline in order to be, in her mind, considerate to our guests. We disagree, and think that after factoring in driving to the hotel, checking in and driving to the reception hall, our guests will really only have 1:30 free at most. We know that not everybody will be staying at the hotel, and plan to give them options and ideas about what they can do to occupy themselves in between the ceremony and reception.
So now I'm second-guessing the decisions the my fiance and I made a couple months ago about our timeline, and I'm looking for feedback. Am I completely overestimating how much time pictures and travel (and misc.) will take in between the ceremony and reception? Should we reconsider our timeline in order to make sure our guests have limited free time?