Reception Hours?

Our reception is technically 6:30-11:30 in terms of availability but we're more likely to end closer to 10:30 or 11

Our time was set by our venue, and it’s 4 hours. We’re not doing some of the traditional stuff like garter, bouquet toss, dollar dance, etc.

Our venue set the times. The reception started at 6 pm and ended at 10 pm. We had an after party at a bar afterwards.

View Quoted Comment That makes sense! Do you have to have the venue completely cleaned out by 11:30? Or guests leave by 11:30?

View Quoted Comment Skipping those definitely gives you more time for socializing! I skipped those at my wedding too. I don't think we had a definite number of hours, but we had to end our reception by midnight.

View Quoted Comment Ending at 10pm is perfect timing when planning an after party! Did you coordinate with the bar ahead of time? Or were you able to just show up at the bar after the reception? Our venue didn't define what time our wedding would be at, though our ceremony had to be completed by 5pm, and our reception had to end by midnight. Our after party ended up being us hanging out with friends in the hotel lobby for a few hours after we got back from the reception.

So the bar thing is actually kind of a funny story. Across the street from our wedding venue/hotel was a bar so that's where we planned on having it. Well all of our friends went over to the bar and I changed into a short white dress and then my husband and I went over. Well we didn't have our IDs because we didn't exactly think we'd need them especially because I don't even drink but they wouldn't let us in even though it was very obvious we had just gotten married and all of our friends who were already inside were our same age. So us and all of our friends let the bar and went back to the hotel. We didn't realize it until the night before but the hotel had it's own bar. They obviously knew we were the bride and groom since they had just hosted our wedding in the other part of the billing so they didn't have to id us or anything. It ended up working out well. We found out a week or so later that the original bar across the street had closed down two days after our wedding. Apparently they had been purchased by a different company.

View Quoted Comment I believe that it's just guests out by 11:30 because I think we technically have the space 7am-2am for set up and tear down.