Wedding length

A typical reception lasts 4-6 hrs. You would be surprised how fast it goes by. Lets be realistic in our thoughts, your family will be excited to share in your moment, they will love the free food and dancing, but the longer they stay the more you will pay. You and your new husband will probably head out early anyway. I really think that is a good timeframe for you even with most of your family being from out of town, they will not expect you to be entertaining them on your wedding night. Just keep those thoughts in mind. I hope everything works out.

Best Wishes,

Our wedding begins at 2pm and will end at 7pm...start to finish. Our ceremony is only about 30 min. long, so from 2:30 till 7pm is our reception. So, on average, 4-6 hrs long.

We are having our wedding in a spot that is out of town for everyone as well. I am having my wedding/reception at a state park and they are letting us stay all day. The ceremony will be from 11-11:30am and we won't need to leave until 9pm (we will serve both lunch and dinner in that time). Trying to make sure that I would not feel rushed was really important to me. With only 55 guests, I'm hoping that it'll feel like a special family reunion with great food and not much work, but plenty of time for people to hang out with each other and enjoy the day. I'm hoping to have time to sit and eat as well as talk with family and for me and my new husband to have a moment to catch our breath. I don't think ours is typical - but just so you know, you don't have to go with typical if you don't want to...

As a general rule, you can figure 1 hour for the ceremony from the start of the prelude music to the end and an hour for cocktails. Starting at 6:30 , that would leave two and a half hours for dinner and dancing. This doesn't seem like a lot and it would really depend upon the number of guests and how elaborate your want the reception to be. It often takes a lot longer for everyone to be served than couples expect. However, you also don't want anyone to feel that the reception is dragging on. A total of four and a half hours is probably just right for a fairly simple, intimate wedding. You might feel rushed if you have a lot of guests and anticipate a lot of drinking and dancing.

Of course, if your out of town guests will be staying for a while, you may have other activities for them such as a rehearsal dinner or post wedding breakfast.

Best wishes,

Margaret Sneddon, Harpist

We are starting our ceremony about 2:00 or so but its going to be a very short ceremony. Snacks and drinks are available while we have pics done and then dinner starting at about 3:00. We hope to have all the fun start by 4:00 and anyone left after 8:00 is auto clean up crew lol. We have 2 hours to have the venue back the way it was before we got there.

So Ceremony- 20 min

Pictures- 30 min

Dinner- 1 hour

and 4 hours for dancing, cake, garter, boquet and saying "Hi" to everyone.

It will go quick.