Anyone doing a winter wedding (or any wedding where ceremony and reception takes place in the same venue)? Curious when your ceremony time and when cocktail hour is?
I was thinking:
3:30pm - ceremony
4:00pm - group photos
4:30pm - bride and groom go out for photos, pee break for guests, food station is set up
5:00pm - cocktail hour, bar opens, passed appetizers served, bride and groom are back for receiving line
6:00pm - entrance into the ball room
We're in the GTA and the sun sets around 4:45 during the time of year we're having our wedding so I want to take advantage of golden hour.
Bride is saying for weddings where ceremony and reception is the same spot, cocktail hour starts immediately after the recessional and dinner service beginning an hour after. Anything longer than an hour is considered dragging and guests could get bored. Consensus among the various boards and communities also suggests that. So bride thinks we should either jump away for photos and let that be cocktail hour, starting dinner at 5pm or delay our ceremony by an hour or two and start dinner at 6pm or 7pm. I don't want to start dinner at 5pm. It's too early for most of my guests. And I also don't want to miss out on the golden hour. In the event we don't get any snow, it's our only chance of getting really nice photos outdoors.
In pretty much every wedding I've been to, the bride and groom takes photos with ceremony attendees for a good half hour before moving onto other festivities, including a full hour of cocktail. Granted, majority of these required travel time in between their ceremony and reception. I have been to a few with the two events in the same venue and the couple timed it so that photo taking time is part of their cocktail hour but they had late ceremonies and the dinner service started at 7pm. I've also been where photo/cocktail time mashed together into a 2+hr affair (we won't be doing that).
I personally don't consider cocktail to start immediately after the recessional since we're spending time taking photos with the group and the bar won't be open. In my plan, we do technically have a 1.5 hour gap between the group photos and the entrance but we also have a food station and passed appies with a running bar for the latter hour.
What do you think?
I also know a lot of couples allocate an hour for photos but I feel like half an hour is enough for us outside during the winter.
