Indoor hotel ceremony

We hosted our ceremony in a smaller ballroom, of our reception venue. (For privacy reasons, this isn't our actual ceremony). We used the regular, banquet chairs, and didn't have a chuppah. It was in a historic building, with dimmed lights, so not a lot of décor was needed. It came with a small platform, on which the officiant stood, and a sound system, for amplification. We also rented two pillars, for flower arrangements to stand, on either side of the officiant. The flowers were later used in the reception ballroom.

Our photos actually took many hours, so we did do a first look. My husband had been in a bridal party and they missed their entire cocktail hour, so he didn't want to do it that way. Our band played for about 15 minutes, after the cocktail hour was over, while our guests were seated in the ballroom, and we freshened-up, for our bridal party entrance.

We are having our wedding at a hotel, too. Currently, our plan is to do the ceremony outdoors in their courtyard and hold the reception in their large ballroom. Cocktail hour will take place in a spacious indoor area between the courtyard entrance and the ballroom entrance.

Our backup plan if the weather is bad is to hold the ceremony in the ballroom, and then the hotel staff will flip the room and set it up for the reception during cocktail hour, while everyone is outside the ballroom in the area I described above. They assured me they do this all the time. Perhaps ask your venue if they have the ability to do something similar for all-indoors?

We had our ceremony in the half the ballroom (we had the whole ballroom for the reception). The hotel staff "flipped" the room during cocktail hour (which was in a different area of the hotel). I didn't have special decor except a Christmas tree (we got married the Saturday after Thanksgiving and had a Christmas/winter theme) at the end of the aisle (to give the area a "focal" point). The tree was moved into a corner of the room for the reception. (I had guests sign ornaments instead of a traditional guest book and I had 2 little girls hang them on the tree. This allowed me to include the girls; I already had a flower girl but wanted to include them in the wedding).

@theresa I like that idea! Nice that you found a creative way of a guest book.

@samantha no court yard area available,that's the only option.

@Ashley, my suggestion was to look into seeing if they would do both your ceremony and reception in the same ballroom and flip the ballroom during cocktail hour. That's my backup plan in case we need to do all indoor and identical to what Theresa described. I'm sorry if that was not clear in my initial comment.

We are using adjoining ballrooms. Have rented an arch for the front. I'm not doing a whole lot of decorating because I'm not wasting the money & people on here assure me that guests won't really notice.

We are also using adjoining ballrooms. The ceremony room will have an arch with pillars on either side. On top of the pillars will be 2 big bouquets of white hydrangea and baby red roses. We will have floating candles and rose petals lining the aisle on both sides, but that's it for decor. Our ceremony will only be about 15-20 minutes, so the decor is simple in there.

I don't think the distance is a horror if that's what you really want. We do a lot of weddings in gardens and other spaces that are that distance away. You have cocktail hour start 45 minutes after the projected end of the ceremony, it goes for an hour, and then you arrive. I don't see the potential for lateness for your entrance to the reception, if that's what you mean. And people can be just as late to a hotel ballroom as they can to a church.

Of course, if you have a second location, you're now looking at transportation costs and the possibiity of decor that can't be reused (which generally happens if everything is in one place).

Some of the hotel weddings I've done have had a simple, pretty archway that was then used to frame the head table, and then lined the aisle with the centerpieces.

We are using 2 ballrooms. They are not adjoining but they are literally right around the corner from each other. The ceremony space we are keeping simple...we have draping which will define the wall space with up-lighting, aisle runner with pillars defining the aisle with floating candles and rose petals encasing the alter. We are not having an arch.