Late Night Wedding!

This will absolutely depend on your crowd. If they’re big party monsters or like to stay up late, then this might be fine.
I personally like to eat dinner late but most people might think this is too late. I’d also worry people would eat a lot of appetizers during cocktail hour and not much during dinner.
If you’re unable to move your time to earlier I would just make it very clear to your guests at what time dinner starts so they can plan on a late lunch and not be hungry until dinner

Yikes, it’s totally a “know your crowd thing.” But can older family members wait that long?


Our crowd is older (we’re 40/50s) and we all need to eat early. We also had 3 diabetics (with only 15 guests) and eating late would have put them in danger of passing out.

If it helps, our timeline was:

6:15 -6:45 ceremony (guests arrived to the venue at 6)

6:45-7:45 cocktail hour

7:45-midnight reception

We had a formal upscale wedding in a fancy venue, if that's relevant. I would recommend that you shorten your timeline in general. 1 hour is standard for cocktail hour, and if you're doing a first look, then you certainly don't need more than an hour. I would also consider cutting another half hour and ending your reception closer to midnight (even 12:30 would be better than 1). Either way, shortening the cocktail hour to one hour seems like the first and most logical step, in my opinion

Late start isn't the problem. The gap between the ceremony and the beginning of the reception, even if a cocktail time, should not be over an hour. Ceremony end at 7:30 ( most are half hour) start cocktails immediately, reception at 8:30 would not be too late. If you need to do picture groups, at least family groups and men side, Women side, earlier, do. But do not go over an hour for photos, and if possible get finished sooner and join cocktails.

I have not attended as a guest a wedding that late, but I have worked one that late! Everyone seemed to have a blast and when we closed at one they were looking for another place to continue the party

View Quoted Comment That’s a good idea to let everyone know that it’ll be a later start for dinner. I think if we can’t move it any earlier, I’ll include that on our wedding website so that everyone can see! Thank you so much!!

View Quoted Comment The reasoning behind our cocktail hour being extended was that when we added on our Viennese hour, it added on a whole hour to our reception, and our venue is one of the more popular, upscale venues in the area. A few of our guests had jokingly said to me and my fiancé that they wish they had more time for our cocktail hour because the food is AMAZING at this particular venue, so we asked our venue if we could split our extra hour of time and do a 1.5 hour cocktail hour and 4.5 hour reception!

View Quoted Comment You are definitely right that it depends on the crowd. I feel like I’m going through my entire guest list right now trying to figure out who would stay out that late and who would go home early 😂 luckily we don’t have any medical concerns in terms of eating schedule, although that is certainly something that we would make our highest priority of course if it was a concern

View Quoted Comment As long as you are only gone about 30 minutes, that would be great. That means the late dinner is fine too. But with that relatively small wedding, for you, both families, and all attendants to be gone an hour is too much, Cocktail hours are not mostly about the food. People want to talk. All the central people and hosts should not be gone that long. If you do not want to consider doing most photos other than B and G earlier, if your reception/ dinner place is suitable, you might consider doing a very few pics of you right after the ceremony
And have your photographer set and light an area where you can take group photos right after dinner. People like to watch. And you might like to invite small groups of friends, or family, to have pictures taken with you, when usual family and wedding party are done. In place of visiting those at other tables, this is something people enjoy, and chatter while doing. A few of the places I do some catering are smallish inns, a d a restaurant whose function room is up to 80 with only the small dance floor set up. It has always been a favorite for small wedding to have pro photos that include guests. Pay the photographer a little more, but no photobooth. And it gets people up and mixing. And you miss max a half hour after cocktails by doing no group shots then. And your family and wedding party are there when you are not, at the cocktail hour beginning. Think of it as your entertainment instead , and a prelude to your Vienna Bar

I guess it’s a know your crowd thing as others have said. Dinner past 8:00? I’d either be starving by that point, and hangry!, or I ate before the ceremony and am not hungry at all.
Also, I didn’t make it til midnight on New Years. There’s no way I’d last at a party until 1am add on top of that a drive home. 9-10 is typically my bedtime.
I’d shorten the cocktail hr to just an hr. But at that point the half an hr isn’t going to do much. I hope it all works out for you, but this would not be an ideal situation for me or my crowd. Most of our guests were gone by 8:30 our official end time was supposed to 9, but we wrapped it up when the room was almost empty.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for your reply!! I think I explained a bit confusingly! FH and I, along with BM’s and GM’s will be there for the full cocktail hour and reception! (With the exception of taking just maybe a handful of pictures since we are now married) All of our photos will be done beforehand because we want to be able to enjoy our full day with everyone! I love your idea of a photo with all of the guests though, that’s a great idea!!

View Quoted Comment You’re definitely right with it being a crowd thing! Our crowd definitely tends to fall more on the later side, so I’m thinking maybe what we’ll do is just make it abundantly clear to everyone that we will be having PLENTY of food (our biggest must-have in a venue) and that it will be a late, late night, so we’ll give information for babysitters to those with kids, etc. We are having a bus back to the hotel so that no one has to drive home that night, because at least 70% of our guest list is staying that night, although it’s looking like it’s going to be more like 80%. Thank you so much for the advice!

Depends on your crowd. But your venue seems unreasonable on this. I went to a wedding where dinner started around 830 and after dinner most people left. Everyone just seemed tired and a little bit cranky because we waited too long to eat (after a very long and very sparse cocktail hour, so yours may differ here)

View Quoted Comment Oh no!! That’s making me anxious!! 😂😂 the bride and groom must’ve been so upset!! I will say our cocktail hour is VERY full of food, and we’ll also be serving very very light refreshments as guests walk into the venue prior to the ceremony, so we’ll be giving food throughout the night. I don’t want anyone to be hungry at all!! Hopefully this won’t be the case with our wedding if we can’t move our ceremony time!

View Quoted Comment Agree with this. Cut the cocktail to the standard hour.


Most of the people we know (mixed range between 20s and 40s) do not eat that late unless they are working a late shift. It's a know your crowd thing with any possible medical concerns. Also hardly anyone eats before the ceremony so keep that in mind.

This is a know your audience thing.

So I am a total morning person, never a night owl and I think this sounds amazing. I'm also a huge fan of the extended cocktail hour and it's often my favorite part of weddings—the chance to talk to people not at your table, try some different cocktails, delicious apps.

What I would do is put an extremely detailed timeline on your wedding website of what refreshments people can expect at what times, including the Viennese. I'd also ask your DJ/band to play hyped music during cocktail hour so the vibe is energetic and party-like and not dull. I think that'll help from people getting bored and focused on not eating dinner yet. And of course, lots and lots of appetizers! Maybe even consider stations?

Omg thank you so much this made me feel so much better 😂😂 we are doing stations during our cocktail hour! We have a handful of passed and then about 12-15 stations throughout the full cocktail space. That’s a great idea to include a super detailed timeline on the wedding website, and I think I’ll include it in our hotel welcome bags as well. We’re also thinking about having it printed on our menus that there will be a full Viennese hour after dinner so that everyone can see. You relieved so much of my stress with your comment, thank you!! 😂

It's totally doable, my timeline was pretty similar. I remember people saying but if we eat at 8 isn't that too late? Your guests will probably have a late lunch to head out to your wedding because they'll have an idea of when dinner will be served. I put the timeline on our website so that everyone could access it whenever needed. There was a lot going on with our guests so everything was smooth. We had our ceremony, had cocktail hour while we took some photos we then made our grand entrance and did our first dance. We did our dances with our moms and went straight to dinner, it was about 8:30 pm maybe a little later. our dinner was about an hour long and it ended with speeches from our two sisters. We were dancing and partying by about 9:30. Our wedding was on a Sunday and the ballroom was packed til about 11:45 which was when majority of the guests called it a night, our bar was popping so people we're lit in a good way. Most of our VIP's stayed until 12 and the it was over.