When do you need to serve a meal?

If it starts at 7 you need to serve a meal. Most people would be getting ready/traveling to the ceremony started at 5ish which is normal dinner time.

If you have a 7pm start and I live 30 minutes away, then I probably left home at 6:15 to avoid being late in case of traffic. I started getting ready at 5:30. I definitely would not have had enough time to eat and I would be starving by the time your reception started.

People are not going to get fully dressed, get make-up done and then bolt their food down to make it to your wedding on time.

Either push back to an 8pm ceremony or move things to mid-afternoon.

If you choose the 2 PM option and the whole thing is over by 5, you could just do apps/cake/punch. But 7 PM is definitely dinner time, so that wouldn't work.

If your wedding starts at 7, I'd still expect dinner at the reception, eating around 5/5:30 would feel very early to me. Also, assuming the same timeline, if your wedding started at 2 your reception would start at 3:30, and unless it's only lasting 2 hours (i.e. over by 5:30) I'd say you'd need to serve dinner at that time as well.

I think you should choose the 2pm ceremony. Have a reception from 3-5:30 and let people eat dinner.

If you did 2pm and made it clear that it was a cake and punch reception and ended by 5, I wouldn't begrudge you dinner - 5 is early enough for most people to figure out their own dinner, after all the regular work day ends at 5. Most people don't get home til 5:30-6:00. Besides, people will presumably be eating something at the punch and cake reception

Absolutely not. My ceremony begins at 7pm, and I'm offering heavy apps for cocktail hour, and a full meal after.

2pm is better if you want to avoid serving a full meal, but I would still offer some apps.

Wow not to be rude ... but those morning or afternoon weddings... with no food... no dance... no drinks... it just sounds weird to me... and a little boring.... why not wait a little more and save to have a great wedding... well maybe its a culture thing but def not my thing... good luck anyways !

I feel like regardless you have to serve some type of food. Regardless. You need food.

Weddings used to be most commonly church service followed by cake and punch. I guess people back then didn't need as much in order to be there for the B&G

A 7PM start time requires that you provide a meal. Not appetizers and dessert....a meal.

If you do not want to spend that kind of money, you need to go with the 2PM start time. You could do appetizers and dessert with a 2PM start.

Actually that is still acceptable, Jenny. It just can't be near a mealtime.

Weddings used to be about the linking of two families for the purposes of beneficial business interests or adjacent land. Times change. It's really snotty to imply there's something wrong with people for wanting to eat at a mealtime.

Thanks, ladies! We are really hoping to get a 2 pm time slot but we were wondering if we would have any wiggle room with that if we had to do a 7 pm time slot in order to get married in our preferred time frame.

Go with the 2PM start time if you wish to serve appetizers only!