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Originally posted by giamaria:
They will after they are married, right? .

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I'm getting the planning underway, and am trying to accomplish my first, and probably most important, task: finding a ceremony and reception site.

We went and looked at the place we want to have the ceremony, and we liked it a lot. The only problem is, because we're not having our reception there (too expensive!), we don't get our first pick of a date and time. So which one of these options would you go with (thinking especially from a guests point of view):

1) September 18th, 2004, ceremony 1:30 pm, cocktail hour 4 pm, dinner at 5 pm.
I'm really not sure I want our guests to have to wait 2 hours before going to the reception, then waiting another hour for dinner. But we can't really eat dinner at 4 either...

2) September 18th, 2004, ceremony 6:30 pm, dinner 7:30 pm.
I really like the idea of having the ceremony at sunset. I am also more of a night person, so this time appeals to me in that way. However, we'd be cutting it close having dinner at 7:30 if we go with the reception site we're thinking of (about a 15 minute drive), and is 7:30 too late for dinner? Then the entertainment/dancing wouldn't start until 9 ish.... is that too late??

3) We can have the coveted 4 pm ceremony time at our site in July or August, for some reason. But it's really hot and humid in Minnesota during those months, and I wanted the pretty leaves starting to change view.

4) Find a new ceremony site.

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Originally posted by giamaria:
anyone have an extra groom? That seems to be my biggest challenge to date in this wedding planning adventure.

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LOL...ditto on that for me - a guy who wants to commit would be great!

FOr what it's worth, I don't think that 7:30 is too late for dinner. I say that because at my wedding, dinner will be starting at 8-ish. The ceremony will be at 6:30, (it should only be about 20 minutes), cocktail hour immediately following, and then dinner. Thankfully for us, everything is being held at the same place.

i don't think dinner at 7:30 is late -- i think that's a great time, actually. the 9PM reception would be ideal for me.

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Originally posted by hermia:
I'd go with the later time -- I hate long delays between ceremony and reception. We had friend who had a 2 p.m. service (full mass, ugh) and 6 p.m. cocktails, followed by the reception.
No, 7:30 isn't too late for dinner, especially since usually the entertainment and dancing kind of start after the toasts, during and bewteen courses. Would you skip a cocktail hour? What if you had 8 p.m. dinner (don't know if this is odd in your neck of the woods, it's standard here) to give people a little time?

[This message has been edited by hermia (edited 05-28-2003).]

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I totally agree with Hermia. For my sister's wedding we are having the ceremony at 5:30 (they are having a full mass - arghh!), then a cocktail hour and then dinner at 8 with dancing etc. beginning at 9 or so...

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Originally posted by mamichan:
SLourdes, where did you decide to have the wedding/reception?

i don't think dinner at 7:30 is late -- i think that's a great time, actually. the 9PM reception would be ideal for me.

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I still actually haven't decided on a reception site. We're still looking at those, but we've decided to have the ceremony at the Como Lake Pavillion. Most of the places we're looking at for reception sites are in the St. Paul area, about 15 mins or so from Como Park.

Thanks everyone for your input! I didn't think it sounded too late either, but Matt made me worry that the older guests might think this is too late. But it really solves a lot of our problems- wanting to hire a band for only a two hour set, but not knowing what to do for the rest of the reception, for example, and my personal hatred for standing around being bored at weddings.

I have personally always wanted a later evening wedding anyway, and sunset in Septemeber on a lake sounds SO wonderful.

Or maybe you could find easter M&M's that are in prettier colors...

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Originally posted by meredithva:
Since our wedding will be in August, I thought it would be neat to do "flame" colors, but I'd feel terrible asking our bmaids to wear burnt orange or yellow.

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We have a reception site and a date finally! It's going to be at Hidden Harbor in St. Paul Park, which is a bit of a hike, but we got *such* a deal. It's really cheap, and while I'm not overly impressed with the downstairs restaurant and bar, the banquet hall upstairs where the reception will be is so cute! It's huge too, and we get use of a very cute patio with a gazeebo that overlooks the Mississippi. We still haven't decided if we want to do the ceremony there now, or if we want to still do it at our first choice. There are pros and cons to both, but we have some time still to keep thinking about it. Oh, and it will be September 18th, 2004.

My Maid of Honor, who is also making the cake, seems to have picked one out to make. It's gorgeous (and very non traditional) with chocolate covered strawberries on every level. Yum. She's going to make some test cakes for tasting soon.

We got our engagement photos taken ($20, yay!), and I picked up a couple of cute candles from Target's wedding stuff.

It seems to make sense to me to do things like that now, when you're still hyped up about the planning, rather than wait to put them off just to stretch things out. There's going to come a point where you will never want to think about planning again, or 1000 other thing that you hadn't thought of come up, and you're going to think "why didn't I just do this when I thought of it back in June!"

Congrats on finding a reception site -- sounds lovely!

edited to add: Duh, just realized that the wedding is in 2004, not this year! Nonetheless, I still stand by the getting started with planning early, while you're all excited about it and not too stressed ...