2pm wedding with no wedding breakfast

What timings are you planning, and at what point will you be leaving your guests to go home / honeymoon / hotel?

We will be getting married at 2pm (civil ceremony). Then photos on to drinks and canapes . Minggle and chat with guests, speeches, on to evening party at 7pm with carvery buffett

I agree it seems a long gap. can you get married later? Otherwise people will only have eaten canapes, and if they have had to travel, probably won't have had lunch. Providing extra champagne to people with empty stomachs seems a recipe for disaster. You can probably allow 30mins for ceremony, an hour for photos, maybe another hour and a half for mingling and speeches. That would take you up to 5pm. I think an extra 2hrs may be hard to fill.

Thanks for your reply Mrs H to be.

We could get married at 4pm however i am worried about it becoming dark for photos as it is last weekend in september.

Well, to have had lunch at 12 1pm and dinner at 7pm with a reasonable snack inbetween is not impossible timewise, but personally I would dconsider having some kind of reasonably organised activity in the gap, there might be quite a big energy slump if there isn't so much going on, especially with the afternoon drinking!

Probably also worht making sure guests know there won't be food before the evening to make sure they have lunch before the ceremony.

Hi DarkMoomin

thanks for your reply. I was thinking of putting on invites Weddin ceremony at 2pm followed by canapes and champagne on to evening reception 7pm

I think it will still be light at 4pm. I may be biased as this is when our ceremony is, but given most of the photos will only require you two, do you really want your guests drinking all afternoon before your organised reception? I think with little food in between the best you can expect in that situation is a number of the all-day guests leaving early in the evening. I would say, if you have to only do one meal, choose when to provide food, put the ceremony a sensible time before that and be prepared for people to call it a day after whatever weddingy proceedings cake-cutting, first dance? you include afterwards. Ie early ceremony, have the breakfast, do the stuff, finish; or, late ceremony, evening reception. Depending on your venue, supposing it is the photos you are worried about with the light, many provide plenty of indoor photo opportunities anyway.

Are you providing the carvery buffet for your day and evening guests? I'd be inclined to bring your buffet forward to 5-5.30 and push the evening back to 7.30-8pm start with no buffet.

We are having a 4pm wedding (civil), followed by photos and buffet, with our evening reception starting at 8pm. We wont be providing any formal food for the night do, but we wont be cutting our cake until 8.30/9pm so we will serve this then (everyone has room for cake!)

I would try and change your timings so that the main food is served at around 5pm. Perhaps have the buffet at this time and then canapés snacks later in the evening. I had a half two service also in September then a three course meal starting at half four. My evening buffet started at around quarter to nine. People will expect to get something to eat to soak up the booze late afternoon i think.

Personally I'd be starving with that kind of gap and I don't really understand what your guests would do for 4 and a half hours?

Sunset at that time of year is about 6.45pm. If I were you I'd have the wedding at 4pm and then a buffet for all guests in the evening.

Thanks for all your replays. I am going to try and change time to four .

Just to let you all know i managed to change time to four oclock xxx