How long is a normal cocktail hour ?

An hour or less usually. It all depends on how long it takes for the pictures to finish I think. As far as we are concerned cocktail hour is over when the pics are finished that way we can get started on the reception that will be close to 7:30 pm getting started.

An hour? lol

It would be helpful to state your guest count if you want people to consider that. Often people won't bother to search through your previous posts to find such information.

Without knowing the guest count, I would say that cocktail hours are typically about an hour long.

Ours will be 45 - 1.5 hours. We are trying to get as many photos done before the ceremony which we are hoping will only take about 30 - 45 minutes.

Ours will be one hour. I actually want to know though, would it be ideal to have a cocktail hour before going into a sit down dinner?

Good Question, hopefully others chime in soon !

My post wasn't intended to be "snippy." I was simply trying to be helpful to help you receive relevant responses if you believe your guest count to influence the answer. I apologize if you interpreted it that way.

I personally don't believe that your large guest count would necessarily increase the length of the cocktail time. As long as you have an adequate number of servers and bartenders at your venue to accomodate your large guest count, it shouldn't take longer than a wedding of say 100 people.

421 guests? Sorry, but, are you NUTS? LOL!

Anyway, IF you call it a cocktail hour, it should be one hour.

PS...I have been involved in convention planning with more than 2000 guests. Cocktail hour was one hour.

The number of people shouldn't influence the amount of time too much. A group of ten people might get bored in an hour, but once you've hit 40 or 50 people, serving times should settle down, since you want to make sure you have adequate staff for any size crowd.

We are having cocktail hour before a sit down dinner. we are only expecting around 100 guests.

I didn't think MrsOhler's comment was snippy...

I agree with the other ladies, your guest count shouldn't affect the length of time. I think an hour is typical. Mine will probably be 1-1.5 hrs, just depending on what's going on.

I guess I'm just thinking about all of my guest have to drive to the reception. Which is only 5-10 drive between.

I have a small guest list (60) with one bartender so one hour should be plenty. For a much larger guest list such as yours, as long as you have enough bartenders an hour should be plenty.