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Morning/Afternoon Wedding Advice

sheenaloveseddiesheenaloveseddie member
Name Dropper First Comment
in Wedding Vows & Ceremony Discussions

So we have decided to do morning/afternoon wedding and I'm having a hard time figuring out what is a good time to start the ceremony. The ceremony and reception are being held in the same place so we will go straight from the ceremony to the reception. We will be having a picnic style BBQ reception. I don't want to start too early due to getting ready and giving time for people to fly in that morning if need be. I also don't want to start too late because I don't want people to be starving by the time we get to eat. Any suggestions would be great! :-)

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Re: Morning/Afternoon Wedding Advice

  • Sugargirl1019Sugargirl1019 member
    Combo Breaker First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its
    4 or 4:30 ceremony start time would give guests an early start to dinner at the reception. Just make sure you feed them properly for the dinner hour.

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  • CMGragainCMGragain member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    11:00 AM is a good starting time for a morning ceremony.
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  • emmyg65emmyg65 member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    How long is your ceremony? 11 am is the earliest I'd start things, but if your ceremony is short, you could push it to 12 noon or even 1 pm.
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  • jenna8984jenna8984 member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    My ceremony is starting at 2:30pm. Cocktail hour 3-4 and dinner starts basically right at 4. It's early but we aren't "party til midnight" type of people. And people won'tbe starving because they'll know to eat lunch before coming. Even starting at 2:30, the hairdressers made my appointment at 9am so I wouldn't want go much earlier than that. (we are doing first look/ all photos beforehand so hair must be done by 12:30)

                                                                     

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  • AprilH81AprilH81 member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    We had an 11:00 am ceremony and our timeline went like this...

    6:30 Hair and Make-up at the venue (we were late due to a massive snow storm)
    8:00 Parents and Bridal Party get dressed (we were still running late)
    9:00 First look/family pictures (didn't happen until 10:00, we pushed the family pictures back until after the ceremony)
    10:30 Guest arrival
    11:00 Ceremony (we started a few minutes late to wait on a few guests that we knew were a few miles away)
    11:30-12:30 Cocktail Hour/Pictures
    12:30-1:00 Reception Events (first dance, Parent Dances, cake cutting, blessing)
    1:00-1:50 Lunch service (plated)
    1:50: Group Photo of all guests
    2:00: Anniversary Dance
    2:00-4:00 Party time!

    It was a catch-22 with the weather.  The snow made for beautiful pictures but it did cause us to run long on hair and make-up (my hair stylist was late too).  Other than that the schedule would have worked for us.

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  • AddieCakeAddieCake member
    First Anniversary First Answer First Comment 5 Love Its
    We had a 10:30 ceremony followed by a lunch reception that ended at 2:00.
    What did you think would happen if you walked up to a group of internet strangers and told them to get shoehorned by their lady doc?~StageManager14
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  • sheenaloveseddiesheenaloveseddie member
    Name Dropper First Comment
    Thank you so much for your replies! I think I'm going to go ahead and push it back until 1230 so that we can have time to do the first look photos. I think our guests should be eating by 130pm. Hopefully they won't be too unhappy with a late lunch.
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  • AddieCakeAddieCake member
    First Anniversary First Answer First Comment 5 Love Its
    Yeah, if you are going to do photos first, later would probably be better. We considered doing them, but with the earlier ceremony, that would have been too hard.
    What did you think would happen if you walked up to a group of internet strangers and told them to get shoehorned by their lady doc?~StageManager14
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