Late Wedding-6pm

6pm is NOT late! That's the standard wedding start time. Dinner is a must.

ETA my wedding timeline: 5-6 ceremony, 630-7 cocktails/passed apps, 7 - intros and dances, 730-830 dinner, 830-1030 dancing. My ceremony and reception were a 20 minute drive apart, hence the gap between ceremony and cocktails.

My wedding 5 to 9.

Uh you absolutely need dinner.

My ceremony is also at 6:30. It will end at 7. Cocktail hour 7-8. Reception 8-12.

You definitely need to serve dinner.

My ceremony starts at 6:30 and we're doing a full cocktail hour and dinner. It's definitely not too late to serve dinner! You're guests are going to be hungry.

You have to serve dinner! You will be the talk of town of you just serve apps!

Six is not late. Almost all of my venues here invite for 6:00, start at 6:30 and start cocktails at 7:00.

And yes, you definitely need dinner. It can be in a cocktail party format, if you like that style, but you need at least four stations and passed things; it needs to resemble dinner.

I did a wedding like that just a couple of weeks ago; they came in from the ceremony to drinks and a cold station (no pix afterwards, first look before), then they opened up the entire reception with stations and passed. I thought it was great. People love cocktail hour, but there are a lot of 'clues' that let people understand that it's an endless cocktail hour....peopleeat and behave differently. I'm happy to elaborate if you'd like, but you do need an entire meal at that time of day.

I would still serve dinner.

Mr wedding is at 6, we leave reception at 10. dinner is served at 7ish. We are doing buffet, so it's really just as soon as the ceremony is over. Reception is in the same venue as ceremony. You need to serve dinner.

Definitely need dinner. Our ceremony started at 5:30pm. We had cocktail hour and dinner.

Please consider serving dinner. That's right in the middle of dinnertime for a lot of people.

Also please be considerate of guests with medical conditions, Diabetes, blood pressure issues. They'd be getting ready early, then your wedding. They'd have no time for a dinner meal.

6:00 is not late for a ceremony. You need to serve a meal or have very heavy appetizers, which is likely to be more expensive than a meal.

If you do apps, you need to do heavy apps and stations. Depending on how many people, this could be more pricey than a sit down meal.

7PM is dinner time, I think you should serve an actual meal. And yes, in many cases heavy apps can be just as expensive, if not more expensive than a buffet dinner.

I had a 6 PM wedding with a 30 minute ceremony and that's dinner time. We had the following timeline:

6-6:30 - Ceremony

6:30-7:30 - Cocktail hour

7:30-8:30 - Dinner

8:30-11:30 - Dancing/dessert/late night snack

That's definitely dinner time. We had a lot of guests fly in, but also a number that were driving 1 or 2 hours the day of to get there. They were probably hitting the road around 3 or 4 PM so they could get there, get checked into their hotel rooms, and get dressed up before heading downstairs for the ceremony. If they've been traveling and getting ready since before dinner time, when exactly would they have eaten dinner so they could handle not having a full dinner after the ceremony?

Heavy apps can work, but only if you have a huge variety and huge amounts of each app. It needs to be just as filling as a sit down dinner would be. It's usually not a money saving choice.

Keep in mind that your guests will need time to get ready and travel to your venue themselves. You may have been thinking, "the ceremony starts at 6, they'll eat dinner before then." But A) I myself eat dinner at 7 most nights, and B) in order to arrive on time for a 6:00 ceremony, guests will have to start getting ready at around 4:30? Ish? Meaning they'll have eaten at 4:00 at the latest, and will definitely be hungry for a meal by the time your reception starts.

Agreeing with all the PP's. my ceremony was at 6:30, cocktails/apps until 7:46ish, then a buffet dinner at 7:45. a 6 pm wedding is considered a formal wedding time and any guest would absolutely expect a full meal, even if its cocktail style...

HAHAHA.

My ceremony was at 6PM. Most weddings I've been to start at that time. Your guests will 100% expect dinner.

I think there was a post earlier about someone who attended a late-evening wedding without dinner, and she was not impressed and left early to find a drive-thru.

You need to serve a meal - most people eat dinner anytime between 6:30pm and 8:30pm.

6pm is not late for a wedding to start. My wedding ceremony was at 6:00. Cocktails at 6:30. Toasts/dances/dinner started at 7:00-7:30. HAVE DINNER FOR YOUR GUESTS!!