How long did your reception / welcome drinks last?

From what I can remember, ours was about 45mins - an hour. We had waiters going round with glasses of bubbly and canapes, but people could go to the bar and get whatever else they wanted. People will be fine as long as they can get a drink. They'll expect with a 1.00 wedding not to sit down until 4.00ish.

I went to a wedding once where there was a (non-alcoholic) welcome drink and no bar so we couldn't even go and buy a coke, even though we were hanging round for about 2 hours whilst the photos were being taken.

Are you wanting any photos at your reception venue? I would factor in a minimum of 30 mins for this and plan to start them maybe fromm 3-3:15pm to take account of people getting lost on the way to the reception or going to check in to hotel rooms.

I had this too once- there's only so much elderflower fizz you can drink in 2 hours! I think an hour is fine, if you are providing alcoholic drinks....

At other weddings I've been to the reception drinks have gone on for anywhere from 1 to 2 hours before sitting down for dinner (or before the ceremony, or both). At my brother's wedding the cocktail hour, as it's called over there, lasted an hour, but the entire time was taken up by photographs, and he and his wife didn't even get a chance to mingle with people, so I'm planning to make mine closer to 2 hours.

I wouldn't want to hang about longer than an hour. At our wedding people went into the other bar of the venue and we had a few pics done inside the room then they went in and greeted us about 30 minutes later

I'm struggling with this, we are having the ceremony and reception in the same place, we have an acoustic duo playing during our drinks reception and hopefully we will be outside where kids can run around etc. I just don't know how long to give for photographs, there will be drinks and canapés flowing so hopefully our guests won't be too bored!

We're having the first set of welcome drinks in a room in our church after the service for an hour, then we're going on an hour boat trip to our reception venue armed with Prosecco, then we have 45 minutes in our reception venue before dinner where our guests will be treated to cava or a non-alcoholic drink.

I will also be providing water for hydration purposes!