2pm Catholic ceremony...what to do with gap before reception

Re: 2pm Catholic ceremony...what to do with gap before reception

• sessionswedding member

  

  November 2011 edited December 2011

  I don't think you'll need a gap, you just might be getting out at the end of the reception before midnight.
  
  If the ceremony (are you doing a full nuptial mass?) is at 2:00 and you do a receiving line (which I would recommed to make more time for dancing at the reception) that will probably go until about 3:00 or 3:15.  People will get to the reception site over a period of time, probably arriving between 3:20 - 3:45.
  
  I would say have a cocktail hour from 3:30 - 4:30.  Do the grand entrance, first dance, blessing of the dinner, etc. from 4:30 - 5:00 (or until it's all finished), then serve dinner at 5:00 p.m.  Between dinner, toasts, cake cutting, etc. it will still be about 6:00 or 6:30 before you get to the dancing part.  Depending on how long you plan to have an open dance floor, your reception could last until 8:00 or it could last until 10:00!  Just know that your guests may get tired and leave early if you try to make it last until 10:00.
  
  If what you want is a night-time reception feel, and you don't want a gap between ceremony and reception, I would recommend a fall or winter wedding when it gets dark early,  And I can see from your ticker that you're doing just that.  ;-)

  
  
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• MelissaC315 member

  

  November 2011 edited December 2011

  I agree with sessions. You could do cocktail hour immediately following from 3:30-4:30 and then do intros, first dance, etc. followed by dinner around 5ish. That would be perfectly fine and you'd avoid the gap.

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• Bett2012 member

  

  November 2011 edited December 2011

  Depending on your guests, they might want to mill around the church a bit and socialize (there might be people who are at the ceremony but not at the reception, for example), so I might be tempted to put the cocktail hour from 4-5 to give that extra 30 mins if people want to socialize.  Not 100% sure though, because you also probably don't want people wandering around the reception site 30 mins before they're ready to start the cocktail hour...
  
  We're having  an 11am ceremony and 2pm lunch.  So we'll have about 2 hours between ceremony and lunch for photographs and mingling. The guests will be provided with hors d'oevres, but I'm not sure what time. I assume 12:30 or 1 though. And we will be having a fair number of people come to the ceremony that aren't coming to the reception (they've told us that they understand the wedding is smaller, but they'll come to the ceremony for sure).

  

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