Are you having a morning ceremony and early afternoon reception?

I'm not doing that because travel issues made it impossible to have our ceremony in the morning, but that was my first choice! We're getting married at Valley of Fire State Park, so it needed to be either early or relatively late to avoid the hottest part of the day. Our theme is "Desert Sunset," so my dress is red and our colors are pink, orange, purple, and yellow (the BMs are wearing bronze--DB "latte").

Anyway, I agree that a morning ceremony and early afternoon reception is really nice for an outdoor venue. I don't know if you already have your date chosen, but you could also do it on a Sunday that way and probably save even more money on the venue!

Well our ceremony will begin at 11:00 AM and the reception begins at 1:00 PM. We did that for no other reason than we didn't want to be all day fooling with wedding stuff lol. It means I have to get up at the crack of dawn but I can't imagine I'll be getting much sleep to begin with. Ours will be a church wedding with the reception at a country club about 15 minutes away. We plan to be done by no later than 5PM.

Interesting! ! Gabell G, I was was considering Friday or Sunday actually because i know it's cheaper! And I really want to do it early for a change. Everyone I know who got married has never done that, so let me be the first...

Im getting married on a Sunday at 11am with reception imediately following. Everything will be over about 5pm. We are having an Autumn Renaissance wedding. Our colors are mainly burgandy, sage and dark yellow but adding other fall colors. Our ceremony and reception will be outside. Our venue is in the mountains with tons of trees all around, a stream and pond right next to the ceremony which will be behind us at the reception.

I didnt ask if our venue was cheaper being it was sunday. I was just set on my date, but I know the price didnt change because of the time.

I think a Sunday morning is better than a Friday, just because most people shouldn't have to take any time off work to attend.

I think ladylee's point is a good one--the earlier you have the ceremony, the less time you spend stressing out on your wedding day!

Yes and the earlier you can get to your hotel! ;-)

What a great idea. and yes if you are anything like me you will be awake bright and early at 6am anyway.

I am looking at a earlier time for our ceremony too. I want to keep the food costs down. I probally doing early afternoon with reception to follow imediately. We decided to have a Sunday wedding to be able to use the venue we love in our price range. I thinking of a 1 pm ceremony and reception at 2 pm. We also are thinking of reletives that would be traveling so the time might change by an hour before we are fully through. We would have the venue for 8 hours to 12 hours.