How long should you book a venue for?

Most venues will have a set number of hours you can rent for a reception. I would say the average is 4-5 hours.

When FH was a DJ, the standard time slot for a reception (including dinner) was 5 hours, anything after that they tacked on $100 an hour

The average reception is about 5hrs, including cocktail hour. Some venues will offer 6hrs, but the only venues who I've seen offer that are ones that you can have the ceremony at as well. For set-up, they either let you in the morning of or the night before (if it's possible) for you to decorate or to drop items off for the appropriate staff to set-up decorations for you.

I wanted a later ceremony to better lead right into dinner, rather than making people wait or come back. The ceremony is onsite outside and goes 330pm-4pm. Then there will be a cocktail hour 4pm-5pm for us take pictures. Will all meet inside the ballroom at 5pm and have dinner till about 7pm, then dance the night away 7pm-12am.

So basically the wedding as a whole goes 3pm-12am, so about 9 hours.

I plan to do set up the night before, and the wedding party will be in to get onsite makeup and hair ready at 8am.

The bridal reveal will be at noon, and will continue to do wedding party photos 12pm-3pm.

It's a whole day event!

But we didn't rent our venue by the hour, we get it for the entire day, hence why we will be there 8am (when they open) to 12am (when they close).

Our rental of our venue is 12 hours. That gives us time to get ready there, have the ceremony, the reception, and clean up.

We have our venue for 12 hours. You have to take into account the time it takes to set up if you need to, and if you're getting ready at the venue you need to allot (is that how you spell that? Looks weird) time for that.

Hi Lauren, welcome to WW! Make sure to upload a picture for your avatar (instead of the default icons) so that we can get to know you and tell you apart from all the other posters.

This will definitely depend on your ceremony and reception plans, and on what each venue offers!

On average couples have a 1-1.5 hour cocktail hour, plus a 4-5 hour reception. That's just for the active party time though Make sure to ask each venue about set-up and clean-up time, when you can start decorating the venue, and is any of that time included in your rental!

Picking a venue how long to book before the wedding day?