Need Some Help on Ceremony to Reception Transition
Our problem is that we have just one large room for both the ceremony and reception. This room easily will hold everyone for the whole affair. The hallway outside of this room is large (at least 12 ft wide) and has some pews in it like benches, and the kitchen is ugly but has enough room to hold maybe 30-40 sitting down. But we are looking for good, comfortable ways to transition our guests from wedding to reception.
We will not change the venue- this place is very important to his family and is walking distance from his grandparents farm, where we got engaged (and also where we started dating).
We cannot change the date.
The closest place for a reception not at the schoolhouse is a 30 minute drive in the opposite direction from the way most of our guests will return home.
There is a larger town about 30-45 minutes back towards civilization that may have reception venues I have not checked out.
Ideas I have thought of:
1. Move guests into the hall, have coffee and light food with coffee at one end, place as many benches in the hall as humanly possible (probably enough for 30-40 to sit down without feeling crowded) and pay a catering service to make the fastest transition of setting up tables and bringing in cake and food known to man. People can also go outside if it is a decent day, which it might be. This would also involve us doing a first look and wedding party pictures beforehand, so the only photos being taken at this time would be the family group portraits (which I'm hoping to keep at less than 10 separate groups so it should take about 20 minutes if we are organized well).
2. Have the tables set up and have guests sit there during the wedding. This is not my favorite idea ever- I went to a wedding like this once and was very confused when we got to the venue and it was set up for a reception- I thought we had gone to the wrong place, started asking around, and then people thought I wasn't actually a guest. (I was a friend from college and most were family). Also the tables were close enough that when the bride walked in with her dad she bumped some of them.
3. Have the reception somewhere different and make people drive an ungodly long way, possibly in the wrong direction from home (we are going to reserve hotel rooms in that slightly larger town just In case family don't want to go all the way back home after the reception). I have already made my guests drive four hours or more to come to my wedding, I do not want to do this to them.
4. Limit the guest list to less than the 70 people (some are family and friends that I love and am close to but wasn't necessarily going to invite, but are expecting an invite and are going to be hurt without it) and have the wedding in one half of the large room, and the reception in the other half (not my first choice obviously).
Any additional ideas or thoughts (that don't involve changing the date or the venue because the venue is the one thing that my fiancé and his immediate family really care about) would be great. Pictures of hallway, the one big room, and the kitchen attached. Sorry for the poor quality.
Re: Need Some Help on Ceremony to Reception Transition
For this plan- what do you do with people during that bit of a transition, though? There's a side door near the front and a side door near the back- do you have the wedding party process out through the partition, then have the guests go out the front side door, down the hall, then back through the back side door which- Tada! Is now a reception area (and the catering service has basically followed them into the ceremony space as they've exited it and is transforming the rest of it). Our other problem is chair numbers- we should have more than 70, but less than 140- so some people are going to need to vacate their seats so they can be moved to be reception seating. I think as long as people are taking their time exiting and entering this should work out swell, especially if theirs enough room in the back (already set up bit) for non relatives (ie those that won't be in the family shots- which can take place outside or wherever if we need to move from the front of the ceremony space) to sit.
Tldr: sounds like a good fix on the original plan, would like help on directing traffic out and back in.
When does it go from being a transition, "here's a seat and coffee, give me a couple seconds to put a table together for you" to being a gap, would you say? Is there a time limit? Or is it the environment?