Hi Ladies!I'm looking for a bit of insight from all of you into a dilemma I'm having. I should start by mentioning that the date we've chosen for our wedding (3/21/15) is significant to my fiance and I - it is actually our anniversary, and we've already booked our dream reception venue. We're inviting about 210 people, and literally about 110 of them live in the same town that the wedding ceremony (Bristol, RI - which is the town both my parents grew up in, and where both side of my extended family still live) is being held in. Those that aren't local will probably end up staying overnight, and we've reserved a pretty large room block at the hotel we're holding the reception at - which is in Providence, RI.
Because our wedding is during Lent, and my fiance and I are both Catholic (and my mother's family is very religious), every church in the area is being very strict about the time they are willing to do our ceremony (since there are other religious ceremonies that must take place during the day, such as confession, stations of the cross, etc). It's actually incredible that we were able to get a church to agree to hold the ceremony during Lent, as some of them flat out said that churches are supposed to refrain from celebration during Lent, etc. The latest we can get a church to agree to do our ceremony is with a 1:30pm start time, meaning the ceremony would end around 2:30pm.
The problem is that, currently, cocktail hour begins at 5pm. We were planning to have a "formal attire requested" type of reception (not sure if we will be listing it only on the reception card, not on the invitation, or just passing the word by mouth) and my mother is confident that the guests will use the 2 hours to go home (or to their hotel rooms, which are where the reception is being held) to change and freshen up, since a 1:30pm ceremony doesn't lend itself to cocktail/evening attire for the reception anyway.
Meanwhile, I feel horrible that my guests will need to find a way to entertain themselves for 2 hours. (It's approximately a 30 minute drive from the ceremony in Bristol to the reception in Providence).
So, I guess my questions are thus:
- Is having the 2 hour gap completely unacceptable/inappropriate? Should I be trying to beg priests or change cocktail hour (although 4pm seems VERY early for a cocktail hour) to get a shorter gap of time?
- Should I try to arrange for something for the guests to do during their 2 hour time frame?
- Should I just not worry about it since, as my mother maintains, the guests are mostly local and can just go home, and those who aren't will be staying at the hotel anyway?
(PS: One of my biggest fears is that people will skip the ceremony due to the gap and - to me - that's the most important part of the whole affair, since that's the actual wedding portion. I know that those nearest and dearest to me would never skip - and I suspect that most of my extended family wouldn't skip either [because it just isn't done in my family] - but then I'm back to feeling like my wedding is just a huge hassle for my guests.)