A former colleague invited me to her wedding. She’s a nice lady; I said of course I’d go. I’ll know the bride and groom and probably 2 to 4 other people from that workplace, which will be awkward because I left that workplace because I didn’t like it, but it will be a good lesson in being an adult. As it got closer to the date and I’ve started paying a little attention to the details, I’ve realized that there are more than four hours in between the start of the ceremony and the start of the reception.
So question one, sub A: what in the fuck?
Question one, sub B: is this normal and I’m wrong to think that they should have done better than that?
Sub C: what do they really expect me to do? There’s “refreshments” at the house in the interim, but that really sounds like something for somebody who isn’t me. Right? That’s for pictures and family and so on? It seems like if every person as close to the couple as me is planning to show up at these people’s house, it better be the case that they live in an amusement park. I have a hunch there’s going to be a lot of loving jesus involved in there somewhere, too, which I think is cool but am poorly-equipped to be a contributor to.
I did ask what precisely the deal was with this, by the way, but I guess they thought I was being cute and didn’t provide me with the information I require. Which makes me think this is perfectly normal and I just don’t know what a wedding is. So what should I plan to do? I’m not bringing a date. I’m single and no way in hell am I signing up for a 10 hour wedding date with somebody I’m not halfway to marrying myself. I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities for awkward silences without bringing my own equipment.
People in this situation just skip the ceremony usually; is that it? I would feel a little rude doing that, but I honestly don’t understand where I am supposed to put my body for this 3 hours or so. It’s like they misprinted my invitation and it was supposed to say “Flag football: 4:30 to 7:30.” I’m not sure I have capacity enough to chit-chat with strangers until the reception starts, much less to do that and then go sit at the singles table or the Senior Partners and Jimmy table.
I imagine the refreshments at the house are for you and everyone else who isn’t in the bridal party. The delay between ceremony and reception will be to allow the wedding party to go off with the photographer and preserve their memories of their special day by having photos taken in random, scenic locations.
Is three to four hours not self-evidently too long for that sort of thing? I mean, they should take as long as they like and take however many pictures of themselves at the bottom of the ocean as they like, it being their wedding. And it’s nice of them to open their home to me while they’re doing that. I’m definitely ready to chalk this up to my having only attended a certain kind of low-key wedding up 'til now. I really had no idea it was common to take this long. It struck me as so much of a departure from what I’m used to that I am genuinely confused about it.
That’s a long delay but not ridiculously so; an hour or two is more common. One hour is barely enough to photograph people on site, two hours allows a lot more leeway. Sometimes the photography is at some other site, so you have to add in travel time and yet more cushion for traffic (or the fact that the fucking Hummer limo takes twenty fucking minutes to even turn around in the reception hall parking lot :smack: ).
But… yeah, that’s a long three hours if you don’t know anyone there. It’s pretty much supposed to be a casual sort of cocktail party, but without any of the wedding party or most of the family.
There’s three basic schools of thought on wedding pictures.
‘Traditional’ timing: Based on the idea that the husband can’t see the bride in her dress before the wedding, pictures of the entire wedding party have to be taken AFTER the ceremony, before everyone wilts/get hammered from the reception. There are also locations (especially churches) which restrict where and when pictures can happen in their location, or forbid them entirely, requiring the party to move elsewhere for picture taking. Especially with a huge picture roster, or with large families or large wedding parties, these “photo breaks” can take a damn long time to wrangle and get all the required shots taken. Therefore there is a 2-6 hour gap between the wedding ceremony and the reception happens after the photos.
Nice hosts will put the wedding in a city or busy urban location and give guests a list of local attractions, or provide guest baskets with light reading material or snacks, or as your family is apparently doing, offering their house for low-key guest amusement while the pictures are going down. Attendance is not required, and most people GTFO and eat lunch or cocktails on their own while this is going on, and then return for the reception. If you are stuck at the house, then I would suggest an e-reader or paperback book, and to wear more comfortable clothing to enable lounging for a few hours.
2) Modern timing: Wedding pictures take place in the days or hours preceding the wedding, and the reception takes place immediately following the wedding.
This is only possible if the family does not hold that the groom should not see the bride in her dress prior to the wedding, and the event is held in a location allowing pictures to be taken before the event takes place. It also requires that the family be ok with pre-staging the event (some people consider that to be bad luck).
Instead of staged wedding photos, there is the “during the event” option, which some people do instead of any staged shots. For this, event location has to allow photos during the ceremony (most churches will not allow this) and the family has to be ok with possible weird shots due to people focusing on the event and the ceremony rather than on the photographer. This sort of photography usually also has the reception immediately afterwards, and the photographer mingles with the crowds and snaps candids of everyone throughout the event.
Sounds like you have always been in camps 2 and 3 so far. Camp 1 isn’t wrong, it’s just a different approach.
(I personally think that it’s much harder on the guests, and needs extra effort to not be an imposition on them. But then again, I have difficulty understanding how anyone can expect guests to attend their “destination wedding” so what do I know?)
3 to 4 hours is excessive, and only done by morons who haven’t taken their guests into consideration at all. Even if the wedding party needs to grab some photographs of the entire wedding party, the reception should still begin almost immediately after the wedding is over. The wedding party joins later.
Obviously, there are a few exceptions, but that’s the general rule.
Ah. Thanks very much for the in-depth reply (and thanks everyone). It’s not in a very happening area, but I can certainly find a way to amuse myself, and will do, I suppose. It seems to be the obvious solution, even though it also still seems weird to me that I’ve been presented with a situation where that’s the obvious solution. But if it isn’t some kind of faux pas to disappear for a while that’s what I’ll do. Maybe my wedding gift will be a scrapbook of the things I do on my vacation from their wedding.
If she gave you an invitation which has “Refreshments at X:00pm” on it, yes, you are invited. If she didn’t want you there, it wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) be on your invitation. If she didn’t mean to invite you, she’s very gauche, and that’s her problem.
4 hours is epic, yes. The time between ceremony and reception should take into account the length of the ceremony and a reasonable amount of travel time between the first venue and the second, with maybe a little padding to account for the unexpected. The last wedding I attended, the venues were some distance apart and it took around 45 minutes to drive to the reception hall. The time between the end of the ceremony and the beginning of the reception was about an hour, but no one was rushing out of the parking lot to the reception, either. Cocktails were available at the reception hall once the reception started, and the wedding party arrived maybe half an hour after we did, with dinner being a short time after that.
On the other hand, other than the “refreshments” part being in a different venue than the official reception, I’m not really seeing how it’s all that different than the above. The reception will be several hours long too, you’re going to have to chitchat with the other guests at some point. You have a place to go, and you’re being fed in the interim. The only real rudeness is if the wedding party won’t be there for most of that time (and there’s no way to tell that from here). It’s possible they couldn’t book the reception hall at an earlier time, and couldn’t book the ceremony venue at a later one, so they took what they could get.
I’ve also seen that sort of thing in the (not uncommon here in the South) case where you have to have your wedding at a church in the afternoon and a church reception afterwards for Grandma, where you drink punch the same color as the bridesmaids’ dresses. Then the “real” reception is in the evening at some other place. I’ve been to a lot of those as an out of towner and it seems to me that the people planning them always forget that not everybody lives just down the road.
Note also that the 4 hours is between the start of the ceremony and the reception… they could be planning a loooong service which could eat into an hour or two of the time.
Closer to five hours total. You’re right, though; I’m already banking on a long ceremony.
Well, the difference to me is that because it’s in the middle, it’s necessarily that many extra hours added to the important parts, rather than my choice. It’s not like the refreshment period is a substitute for being there for the dancing and the speeches and all that, so of course I’ll be socializing with the other guests at the reception for a few hours. In order to do that, I would actually be socializing with them for like seven hours. Maybe it’ll be cool, I don’t know. I’m not saying they’re terrible people or that they’re being rude to me, but that seems like a real difference.
About the only reality TV shows I watch are wedding shows (don’t know why. Just a sucker for a wedding, I guess). There’s another reason for a long break between wedding and ceremony. Some churches do not allow weddings after a certain time of day, particularly Catholic Churches that have a 5:00pm mass. Therefore, your wedding has to be over and out by, say, 4:30 at the latest to enable the church to get ready for the next service. So if you decide you MUST have your wedding in that church and you decide you MUST have an 7:00pm reception instead of a 5:00pm reception which is more reasonable, you’ve just doomed your guests to a mega long intermission between the two halves of the event. I think it’s thoughtless and demonstrates a real disregard for your guests. If invited to that kind of event, I’d do one half or the other but not both. Or just send my gift and enjoy my free Saturday.
My husband and I took pictures before the ceremony. The church had a service at 5 p.m., and our wedding was scheduled for 6:30. So we took pictures, chilled in the reception hall for a while, greeted our guests, got married, and had the reception line leading right back into the hall for hors d’oeuvres and then dinner. Because we fucking hate what your friends are doing to their guests.
Or there’s what his cousin did, which was to have the wedding, take a horse-drawn carriage ride to Severance Hall for a couple hours of photos while the guests waited for the reception to begin. But instead of making us sit around like fools, they rented an ENTIRE FLOOR AT THE RITZ with a band just for the interim – not even the reception band – and fancy hors d’oeuvres so we would have something to do while they took the pictures.
As wonder9 says, what your friends are doing is " thoughtless and demonstrates a real disregard for your guests."
Some venues restrict times as well. Way back when I was planning my wedding, I couldn’t have had a 5 pm reception. Because the venues either had or wanted to leave room to book other events that started earlier in the day and ended about 5. So I ended up with a choice of a 3:30 ceremony (to have the church cleared out by 4) and a 7pm reception or a 10 am ceremony and a noon reception - and my family and my husband’s hate afternoon weddings. I’m sure someone considered that thoughtless, but that person would have been in an extreme minority of my wedding guests.
I understand that there are reasons that you must have a long delay between wedding and reception. As the host, you owe it to your guests to plan for this time and offer them either some entertainment, or suggest entertainment for them, or at least let them know about this delay so they can plan for something to do. Especially for people who have come from out of town, who are literally all dressed up with no place to go, and who may not have enough time to go back to their hotel to sit around, but who have too much time to just dawdle at a coffee shop. Either plan an activity for them, or give them a list of things they can do on their own.
In the OP’s case there is an activity planned. There is a casual reception at someone’s house (the B/G’s house? A relative’s house? It’s not clear but the invitation states “refreshments” at some specific location per the OP)
I see this all the time with weddings around Chicago, usually for the reasons mentioned about scheduling, and its so common that people don’t consider it to be rude. I personally find this annoying, and we didn’t do this when we planned our wedding. But that said, as a guest I remind myself that if I’m so bothered then I can just not go to that wedding. Or go to the ceremony only and not the reception. All the info is on the invitation (or it should be), you have the chance to RSVP regrets if you don’t want to deal with it puttering around for the afternoon.
If I know what to expect (a four hour delay), then I’ll be able to plan accordingly, so I don’t consider it horribly rude - I’ll be sure to bring my own car, and take off and do my own thing until time for the reception. If it is an unexpected delay and I’m stuck waiting around indefinitely, then I’m not thrilled.
