Catholic Church

@Centerpiece hence why I said people on weddingwire disagree. Again that's how I feel. I'm not speaking for others.

Our ceremony has to be at 2:30 too. Can you change your date to an available date at the church you want?

Personally I would rather endure a small gap than have to try take off work on a Friday. You will probably have people skip the ceremony either way so you just have to be ok with that.

I've been to a LOT of Catholic weddings, and the norm in those is to just have an earlier cocktail hour and dinner and the whole thing is done between 8 and 9. Other options are doing an 11 am wedding then a brunch reception or a Friday evening wedding. There's one church around here that will let you do a 7 pm wedding, after the normal Saturday night Mass. Centerpiece explained it well - most churches have regularly scheduled Saturday late afternoon Confession and Mass so the wedding schedule has to work around that.

One of my pet peeves on here is when people refer to it as the "Catholic gap" or "well, we only had a 2 pm wedding option so we had no choice for the gap". It's just poor planning and there's a lot of ways around it. Many people do not like having a gap and logistically it just doesn't make sense. Jeanne always put it well when she said it's like inviting people over to a Super Bowl party, but then kicking them out of the house during the 2nd quarter to go entertain themselves.

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If you want to have your Catholic church wedding, you will need to compromise by not having an evening reception. If you really want an evening reception, then you should forgo getting married in a Catholic church (probably not a compromise you'll be willing to make, understandably, due to religious beliefs). @Rebecca gave great advice.

Centerpiece summed it up well. It's common due to Saturday mass/confession.

Our ceremony is at 12 with party to immediately follow

We showed up at the hotel reception venue during the gap because we didn't know where else to go. We were not allowed into the room because staff was still setting up. We had to sit in the lobby without refreshments for about an hour before they opened the doors.

Tonya&Gary, is yours the last wedding of the day? If the other 2 run late, will you get rushed out so the next mass can start?

I am getting married in a Catholic Church and our ceremony is at 5:00. They offered two times on a Saturday, 2pm or 5pm. We did have to do some research to find a church that allowed this, but they're out there! I went to a Catholic wedding in another city that was later in the day too, no gap.

Have you thought about chapels at Catholic schools? I was going to look into this if we hadn't found our church.

Yep, that's why we did ours on a Friday evening. We didn't want to make our family members and friends entertain themselves for hours between our ceremony and reception.

Following up on what @Laura said, we are getting married in the chapel at my Catholic high school at 3:30pm on a Saturday.

I'm going to probably just find a chapel hopefully instead of a church I've called about 5 churches and all only morning ceremonies I feel awful having my guest wait that long . Especially since most everyone is from out of town .

For my first marriage we were married in the Catholic church. They only offered a 2 pm time slot and then the reception hall we chose only offered a 5 pm reception (I was young and stupid, but that's a story for another time lol). We rented a trolley and took pictures and went to a local pub that was owned by friends of our family. I believe our parents spread the location and info by word of mouth and a lot of people joined us at the bar during the gap.

Maybe it is just out family, but all of the Catholic weddings I have been to have been like that as well where there is a gap of a couple hours between the ceremony and the reception. It's annoying as hell and the only way to avoid it may be to have an afternoon reception instead of an evening one.

ETA: My ex's family and friends mostly skipped the ceremony. I was super PISSED (I get it now, sort of). Like literally there were about 6 people sitting on his "side" of the church, while the other side was filled. This time around our ceremony is in the same place as the reception and there will be no assigned sides lol.

My cousin is Catholic and his wedding was around that time. They had a great cocktail hour for the guests at a B&B which was a little ways away from the church. First, the ceremony was about an hour, then driving to the reception venue, cocktail hour had a seafood bar and a string quartet(?) for entertainment.

When the bridal party arrived, they did the dances and then by that time it was dinner time!

The times we had to chose from were 12:00, 1:00, or 2:00 ceremony. Everything has to be done by 4:00 because of 4:30 mass the church has on Saturday evenings.

I'm getting married in the Catholic Church and the ceremony is going to be a 3 PM. I believe the priest said the latest he could do is 3:30.

Our options were Friday at 6:30, Saturday at 12, 1, 2 or 5:30 and Sunday at 3.

I went to a Catholic cousin's wedding once where there was about a 4 hour gap. We ended up going to my dad's uncle's house and eating sandwiches and trying to waste time without ruining our wedding clothes. We still complain about that huge time gap to this day, so I would try to do as much as possible to close that gap.

Mine is at 3:30pm at a Catholic Church. There is a 5:30 mass after so we have to be out by 5.

I think it may depend on the Church, but generally I believe they are morning/early afternoon.

Some have 4pm and 6:30 masses like this one in my area. The 6:30 would be Liturgy Outside Mass

http://holynamecathedral.org/liturgy/sacraments/marriage/