Our wedding ceremony is 4pm. The reception site is roughly 8 minutes from our ceremony site. With a ceremony start time of 4pm, we anticipate it to be over by 4:30, and have a receiving line out the door. We will be making photos afterward (and planning for it to be as speedy as efficiently possible), but have no cocktail hour at our reception site...so no time to stall the guests as they wait for us taking photos. We were planning on our guests getting the go-ahead to begin eating (heavy hors d'oeuvres) shortly after their arrival at the reception site, while we finish up photos. What do you all feel is the most appropriate take on a timeline for this? Is it realistic?
Re: Wedding timeline (no cocktail hour)
My venue does a mashed potatoes bar(which we are doing). We are pretty much doing the same thing this girl is doing but we have having about 12 different apps(one of those being a carving station) and the apps are going to be refilled when low as well. I did not realize the importance of having a good amount of food at a wedding reception that is over a meal time until a couple of months ago when I went to a friends wedding.
I have reactive hypoglycemia so my blood sugar is at a constant low. Due to this I have snack on stuff to keep my blood sugar from dropping. So I went to a friends wedding a couple of weeks ago after getting off work on a Friday. They had actually gotten married up at their temple in another city earlier that morning so this was kind of just a reception to celebrate here in our home town. It was about an hour drive from my work and when I was almost there (literally less than a mile) my blood sugar started to drop. I had to pull over and someone had to actually come pick me up to get me to their reception. Thankfully when we got there they were able to find me some food to snack on which was enough to get my blood sugar back up to normal. The reception started about an hour later and they had a couple of apps which was nice but it was not enough to be considered a meal and this reception was at 7 on a friday after work. My blood sugar sadly started dropping again on my way home but thankfully my FI was with me this time(He was the BM in the wedding which is why he wasnt with me on the way there) and we went a got food after we left. I still had a good time despite my blood sugar issue but it would have been nice to have warning going into this because I would have stopped and got snacks or a small fast food meal on my way there.
I saw something like this on 4 weddings. The girl literally had what would have been considered a meal as her cocktail hour. I am talking plates and plates of stuff. Then they brought out the actually dinner which was a lot of food...and then they brought out this huge dessert bar. SO MUCH FOOD! But I would rather there be too much than too little
This is pretty much the cocktail hour at all Long Island weddings. FI and I are taking pictures before the ceremony for the complete purpose of enjoying the copious amounts of food at our cocktail hour!
Those are not heavy apps. That's actually very light apps. I would totally be expecting a full meal if those were what I was given. And I'd probably leave very early to get dinner, because I was hungry. Your event time demands a full meal as well. You need to either change the time of the event to a non mealtime, or serve a real dinner. Anything else would be very impolite and poor hosting.
You still need way more variety, even if it's replenished. This is still light apps, appropriate for a cocktail hour. If this is supposed to be dinner, people will be disappointed and hungry. This is not dinner. They will expect a meal after it.
I'm the fuck out.
Your guests likely will not have eaten since noon. Your pictures are likely going to take about an hour, plus receiving line time so you're not getting there before 5:30 or 5:45 at best. As your guest, that amount and variety of food is not going to hold me over and unless you're planning for your reception to only go until 6:00, I'm probably inching my way toward the door shortly after you get there so I can find a restaurant if that's all you're serving. You need way more variety on the savory end and could stand to lose a dessert option or two (unless you're having a bonfire, I'd lose the s'mores bar).
People think apps-only is cheaper, but it's only cheaper if you're doing it at non-meal times with a shorter reception. Otherwise, doing heavy apps enough to constitute a meal can very well end up costing more than just a nice, simple plated dinner.