Reception food for late evening ceremony

What do you mean by "not catered"? Ordered from a restaurant or similar I hope? If its self catering, then my answer is "dont".

Unless your average guest age is retirement-home level then that is DEFINITELY not too late for dinner. If I was invited to a wedding or really any event at 7:30 I'm sorry but I would expect dinner. Just to give you some idea, our ceremony is at 8pm and we are having a full dinner following and having a cocktail hour before the ceremony with lots of appetizers.

Keep in mind that your guests will probably start arriving at 7. If it takes them an hour to get ready, and 30 minutes to drive to your ceremony site, then they'll have been occupied since 5:30, which probably means they haven't had a big dinner yet. You don't necessarily have to do a full meal, but I would be serving heavy apps at the least.

The not catered comment worries me. You're not going to self-cater are you? That's a very very bad idea.

Are you over 70? If not, then that's not late for dinner. Don't make your guests get an early bird special somewhere. Either push it back to 8:30 or serve a meal.

I would expect dinner and would not be happy with just pie and cake. My FBIL is getting married in June as well with a ceremony starting at 6pm and dinner at 8pm. I think it's a little late for dinner simply because I usually don't eat that late in my day to day, BUT he and FW are providing DINNER. It is dinner time...feed me as a guest.

I'm having the same timeline and I asked a very similar question. The consensus was feed them a real meal. A coctail style reception with finger foods ends up costing just as much and unless your guest list is less than 30 DO NOT self cater.

https://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/too-late-for-dinner/d3f7beef6637d139.html

Sushi bar? Eta: I just read not catered. I believe depending on the size of the wedding it is possible to self cater and it not end terribly, especially if you have help. Also, feed those people at 7:30!

Ceremonies run about an hour, so it's going to be about 8:30pm and I think that if people see that you're not providing a meal that they're not going to stay long at your reception. Think about it, guests will be focussing on getting to your wedding around the time they would be having dinner so yeah they'll be a little starved. @O&S, I cracked up, you're hilarious!

Feed your guests real, catered food. I don't eat dinner until 8 most nights

That's definitely not too late for dinner. As others have said especially in the summertime people eat later because it gets darker later. You could do really heavy apps but that's not much more cost effective than just serving a full meal. There are very cheap catering options out there. Whatever you do, do not try to make your own food and serve it at the wedding.