How long to eat?

I've been wondering the same thing, so I am glad you asked this question!

I'll be watching this one.I'm also curious.

We're doing our dances right at the beginning so that they're out of the way and people can eat, listen to music, and make their way onto the dancefloor

I think it depends on what type of meal you are having (sit down vs. plated dinner). FH and I are doing a plated dinner and I am relying on the venue to tell us on the amount of time we should plan for. The way I see it, they are the experts and should know what the timing typically is. Having said that, we are doing the dances between dinner courses (so bride/groom dance is going to be when we are first announced, the mother/son dance served between the soup course and salad course and then cake cutting between the salad course and the entree). The reason behind this is that I am only having the photographer for 2 hours so I want to do all the events I want pictures taken of during the first 2 hours which would be during the meal.

We only needed just over an hour for people to eat. That was 135 people with a seated dinner and 2 courses (salad and the main, did cake later). Our caterer said you usually need no more then 1 1/2 hours.

Your eating? Seriously, I don't plan on eating very much, for more than 5 or 10 minutes. Bizzy.

We're having a brunch buffet style reception Theresa. And yes Karen I'm def planning on eating. We're doing comfort foods like Chicken & waffles, cheese grits and meatloaf with all the fixin's! I can't pass that up. Well, in case we need to, the venue already knows to put our food away in to-go platters.

Yes, please eat!!! How many people? Buffets can take awhile to get everyone through, but if it's a smaller party then it won't take that long. Unless you have a really huge guest list, and hour or an hour & a half should be plenty of time. You and your new husband should be the first people through the line, so you'll be done first and can go see everyone.

Your venue will be the experts on this one though.

OK, based on your awesome feedback this is what I'm thinking......guests eat for 45 mins, start toasts, guests take another 15 minutes to finish meal then we'll start our father/daughter dance. Since it's buffet style I'm sure eating will continue through the night, but we're dancing regardless, Lol.

We're guessing 45 minutes for 45 guests. Our list grew literally overnight lmao.

First dance will be as soon as we walk in, and my dancing with my son. We aren't sure what to do with parent dances bc of our crazy parental dynamic, but I figured they'd be done during dinner, as we will ask for the head table and parent tables to be served first.

@Lori, we have a 90 person guests list. I also believe the wait staff will be instructed to plate food for those at the head table while everyone else goes through the line.

While we haven't planned out all of our details for the dinner and all, I envision having the intros and some of the dances out prior to the dinner. I figure that would be good to do since we'll be having a cocktail hour while we get our portraits and other pics done, so everyone shouldn't be starving. But then again, I'll leave it up to the experts to give us suggestions on how to organize the thing.

Sounds good!!! If you can eat first, there's nothing wrong with having guests eat while you do toasts and first dances.