New years eve wedding & church afterwards

No matter what time your ceremony is, you should have some sort of refreshments afterward to thank your guests for attending. Since you're choosing to have a meal time ceremony, you need to provide a meal. Can you host something during the long gap between ceremony and church? Can you have the ceremony between 2 pm and 4 pm and just have a cake and punch reception afterward?

That's an interesting timeline, but you know your crowd better than I do, so if you think it'll go over well, that's great! Are you expecting people to stay at the church between your ceremony and the service? If so, I'd seriously consider providing a meal - most people won't eat before they come to the ceremony at 6, and then would be skipping dinner or leaving to grab something. If you're expecting them to attend the ceremony, leave, and come back for the service, you could say something like "Ceremony at 6:00pm, light hors d'oeuvres to follow. Please join us for the New Years Eve service at 9:00pm."

Your guests are going to be hungry between 6pm and 9pm. Ceremonies are usually 30mins- 1 hour tops. It's very rude to throw a dinner time event without providing some sort of food.

What a cool idea! Would it be possible to do the ceremony at 7pm, though? That way you might be able to avoid serving a full dinner and just do hors d'oeuvres or a cake and punch reception between the ceremony and the church service. And I would word it on your invitations to say "light refreshments to follow" or "cake and punch reception to follow" so that folks know to have dinner before they come.

It's a wedding and a evening wedding so people are going to expect food. Also, the people that are coming to your wedding on NYE are not thinking about going to their church later on. They're thinking this is what they will be doing for NYE. Your wedding with dinner to follow and then home. I think you're going to have a lot of upset guests. My wedding is on NYE as well and we are also Christian. I think if you decide not to feed your guests you need to pick another day other than NYE and definitely a much earlier time and do something like cake and punch.

If you're having your wedding at a meal time, you need to serve a meal. 5 pm, 6, pm, 7 pm are all meal times. Serve your guests dinner, regardless of what you think they're going to do after the reception.