Ceremony times

Question though...are there going to be any weddings before you or do you have the place booked the whole day? If there is going to be a wedding before you, I would recommend going with the first time slot because if the wedding before you goes over time, you will be left scrambling to get ready.

I think 3pm is fine. Unless you are having a very formal and/or religious ceremony, your total ceremony time is only probably going to be 30-45 minutes. You don't necessarily want to leave your guests with too much idle time and since your cocktail hour starts at 6pm, 3pm should be a great time for the ceremony.

3pm would give your guests time to travel to the ceremony site (if need be) without them having to start their day super early (meaning they can stay up later to party!!). Also if your cocktail hour doesn't start until 6 then giving people that huge gap between the end of the ceremony and the cocktail hour may comes the guests are bored while you are off taking your photos.
we are doing ours at 4pm so that our cocktail hour is from 4:30-6. Doing yours at 5 would probably take away from your time to do photos which you for sure don't want

I think 3pm is the nicest time slot out of the three options. Do you have guests traveling by car from out of town? Having it at 3:00 as opposed to 1:00 will give them more cushion for dealing with traffic, etc without stressing out as much about getting there by noon. (I say this as someone who is attending a wedding this weekend in a town that is a 4 hour drive away. I'm glad the ceremony isn't til 3 because we are still aiming to be in town by 1:00 but won't feel that pressure the way we would if it was at 1:00 or 2:00).

However, if you are worried that you won't have enough time between the ceremony and the reception I can understand wanting to push it up. Keep in mind though, that if you give yourself 4+ hours between ceremony and reception, you're going to end up killing a lot of time. Photos don't take THAT long and waiting around will probably feel frustrating and like a waste of time on a day you want to be in celebration mode. 3pm also gives YOU and your wedding party more time to ensure that you're able to get ready, adjust any mistakes or changed minds re: hair and makeup, and put out any last second fires.

Our wedding is at the 3pm time slot so we can spend the time needed before hand to get ready. (I don't like getting up early lol) Our cocktail hour for guests starts at 5:30 and we would 'arrive' at 6-6:15 before dinner. Our ceremony and reception is in the same building so we didn't have to worry about travel time. Our photographer suggested 2-2.5 hours for photos so if we do photos from 3:30-6 that will give us the 2.5 hours and we can mingle with our guests before dinner starts.

Our photos will be in the ceremony location and around the venue so they might only take 2 hours and we can have the full cocktail hour to mingle. You should be good with the 3pm start time We're getting married October 2019 too!

Our venue also offers the same time slot with 3pm and 5pm our cocktails is 6/630 and dinner at 7. Thankful everything is all in the same area so no one has to travel and just walk across the street but yes I was wondering that also cause the timing is so close when do we get to eat 🤣

It depends on lighting for your photos, the suggested time needed by your photographer, and the travel time between ceremony, photos and reception.

If cocktail hour starts at 6pm, and your ceremony is gonna be done at 3.30... your guests have a 2.5 hr gap to get to the reception... plenty of time for them, and they could even stop and get a snack or do something if they really wanted to.

Usually photographers say that you should allow yourself 2.5 hours to take photos. That does not include travel time. So if your locations are close together, you should have time between 3.30-6pm to do all your photos. Plus, I just Googled it, your sunset time that day isn't until about 6.55pm, so you'd have reeeeeally nice dusk/sunset photos if you were taking them between 3.30-6pm... whereas you'd have a massive 4.5 hour gap if you bumped up the ceremony to 1pm... and your photos would be mostly midday (1.30-4pm...), and then you'd have quite a bit of extra time to kill before the cocktail hour as well...

I would talk to your photographer that’s what made us decide on our timing as they told us how much time they needed for photos and it was 2-2.5 hours. So our ceremony is at 2pm and cocktails at 5pm.

We are having our ceremony at 1-2pm with 3 hours in between for pictures. I have a large family so it will take time to get all the family photos in and then to go get the wedding party photos done. We are getting married in winter tho so just trying to maximize photo time outside before the reception. We will be doing a receiving line at the reception instead of after the wedding.

View quoted message This is my plan as well. I really want the first look to be me walking down the aisle, but still want to get a lot of photos done before the ceremony

Thanks everyone... I think the 3 pm slot is better. Gave me some different view points which helped a lot.

View quoted message Thanks I really like the idea of doing as many family photos ahead of time. That should help with photo timing. I think I will keep it at the 3pm

3pm is a good spot for that. It’s almost my same timeline. But the 2-2.5 hrs between the two will go quickly. We will try and do all of our seperate pictures with bridal parties and family before the ceremony to keep the list of photos for after the ceremony to a minimum.

If you do a bigger gap is there something to keep your guests occupied for 4-4.5 hours? That would be my biggest concern. Especially if the locations are the same place or close by.

Our ceremony was at 2, dinner at 5 and it was plenty of time for pictures! My friend's ceremony was 2, reception at 6 and we had a lot of time in between waiting around as pictures were done.

I don't think you'll want 5 hours in between ceremony and reception. I also think you will appreciate those extra 2 hours before the ceremony to get ready, get pictures with your bridal party.

It depends on where you are doing your pictures.t wedding is for 1pm and cocktail hour starts at 5:30 because we are driving to a park for pictures.

3pm is a good time and enough time for pictures before the reception. Changing the time will leave your guests to get ready again hours later.

Leave your timing as it is.

Oh and this is for a October wedding