Making it to our own Cocktail Hour

My FH and I also plan on trying to make it to the cocktail hour. You've already knocked out a lot of time doing a first look and wedding party pictures before the ceremony.

My recommendation is not to include cousins, just include parents, siblings, grandparents, and godparents. It seems to me that if you both have that many cousins, a ton of guests (your cousins) won't make it to the cocktail hour anyways.

Edit: forgot siblings

We made it to our entire cocktail hour. We did a first look and almost immediately following the ceremony had a glass of champagne and appetizer in hand. We didn’t take pictures with all of our aunts and uncles and all of our cousins though. Our family shots included our parents, siblings, grandparents, and one with my aunt/uncle with cousins because I am truly sibling close with those cousins. We love our cousins but we don’t need formal pictures with every single cousin or the ones we’re not close with. If you want to though and you still want to do cocktail hour, can you add more time to your pictures before the ceremony and have them come early? Or have some of them come early? Honestly that might be the best way. Depending on how many family units include these 56 cousins consist of, that could take up a huge portion of cocktail hour. Alternatively, you could ask your photographer to do some poses pictures of you with these groups during cocktail hour and the reception so you’re still enjoying the moment, you just have to pause for a picture a few times.

I wouldn't include the cousins, unless that's really important to you. Keep it to parents, siblings, grandparents if they will be there.

Can your photographer get one shot of the whole giant group (everybody at the ceremony) before they all go to cocktail hour?

I never considered going to the cocktail hour. I've always thought it was to keep the guests busy while pictures were being taken. I'd prefer making a grand entrance at the reception than mingling. That may be because I'm a little shy. Is there an option of extending the cocktail hour by 30 minuets or more so you can do both?

At one of the last weddings I have been to, they took all the family photos before the ceremony. So anyone that you want included in these photos would need to show up a bit earlier.

Personally though - I wouldn't do this. I didn't like seeing the bride (my FHs cousin) before the ceremony, it really took away from her entrance at the ceremony since I had already seen her. And as a guest - it was annoying having to get there 45 minutes before the ceremony started.

We are doing a first look and doing all group photos before the wedding ceremony. I set aside two and a half hours for photos to be done before the ceremony. We also had to do this because we will run out of light after the ceremony. I figured if we want more photos of the two of us we can do that during cocktail hour instead of rounding up family members, but hopefully we have enough and can greet our gusts during cocktail hour.

By doing a first look, it seems like we will make it for the tail end of our cocktail hour.

(That's if I don't feel like hanging out in the bridal cottage with FH and eating our cocktail hour food in there instead )

Following. We can’t be more than 15 min late to cocktail hour due to our transportation contract.

For now, we are only including parents and grandparents (siblings are in WP anyways) in photos. Once the reception gets going we will get a shot in with each of our extended families, but it shouldn’t take too long.
FH and I also aren’t particularly interested in 100 different posss of the two of us, so we will make sure we don’t go overboard.

I did! I made to cocktail hour and I loved it! We made it to the cocktail hour because we took all photos before our ceremony. We didn't want a grand entrance-that's just not who we are, or we're comfortable with doing.

View Quoted Comment If you're shy I don't get doing a grand entrance-that's literally ALL eyes on you 😂

View Quoted Comment Oh man, they should have just kept to photos to immediate family only, not cousins for the photos.
🤷🏻‍♀️I supplied my family with drinks and snacks during our photos that were taken before the ceremony. All were happy and eating.

My ceremony and cocktail hour are at the same site as well. It’s also a Bed and Breakfast so we’ll be getting ready there as well. I didn’t want a first look originally but now we’re going to do one because I don’t want to miss the food. Our families are kind of small so we may have been able to skip the first look and still complete pictures but I don’t want to risk it.

I think it's definitely doable!

We were going to try and make it to ours (we're doing first look and all photos beforehand, too), but then we really got to talking. Why don't we take that time to be alone together? I know there's very little time throughout the day to truly be together and take it all in. So, we've decided that we're going to take a short walk around the park and then go to the getting ready suite and have someone bring us down a drink and some apps.

This was a priority for us because all the apps sounded so delicious and we wanted to enjoy mingling with our guests. We decided to extend the cocktail hour so that it was 90 minutes. We did a first look and the majority of our pictures before the ceremony, and then took the rest after the ceremony. DH and I had a little alone time to enjoy some apps and get my dress bustled and then we joined our guests for the remaining time left which was about 30 minutes or so. I loved it!

This is super helpful, thank you guys!

I've never seen the couple make it the cocktail hour. I always thought your big 'reveal' happens at your reception.

I have planned to do our photos together during the cocktail hour. The family & wedding party photos will be held before, so they can all attend the cocktail hour.

View Quoted Comment Yeah, we didn't be want that big reveal. Not us.

View Quoted Comment If I had it my way we would quietly enter. This is what my FH wants to do. I have to let him have 1 thing.