Get Advice: Dear Tiffany
We are planning an outdoor ceremony probably on September 27th 2008 in the Catskills, NY. For a fall outdoor ceremony and reception when is a good time of day to begin the wedding? The reception will probably immediately follow a short ceremony at the same location.
Dear Tiffany,
Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. First, let me say that an outdoor ceremony in the Catskills sounds absolutely perfect. As someone who had her own wedding last October on Long Island, I can say with much conviction that autumn in New York is really stunning; and a lovely time for a wedding.
So, the time of day that you plan your event depends on a couple of things. Really, at that time of year, a wedding would work well in early afternoon, or late afternoon into evening. It all depends on what style you would like for the event. If you're looking for an autumn Brunch or BBQ style reception with tents and such outdoors, then it may be a good idea to have an early noon or 1pm ceremony, followed immediately by your lunch or Brunch-style reception around 2pm. This way you can take advantage of the daylight hours for the entire event, if thats important to you. This is one option.
Are you more of a nightowl? Do you want to take advantage of the gorgeous autumn sunset for your ceremony? Then I would suggest, beginning just before sunset, with maybe a 5:30 pm start time. Since its a short ceremony and the reception is at the same location, one normally flows right into the other. So your guests will go from your ceremony straight over to the reception area, and get a nice view of the sun setting along the way.
One more thing to consider is pictures. If you are going the traditional route and not letting your Groom see you until you walk down the aisle toward him, then just keep in mind that you wont get to do many outdoor shots after the ceremony, since it will be getting dark around that time of day. So with that, I will take this time to inform you my husband and I chose to do all of our formal pictures before the ceremony. We did this because it would be dark after our ceremony, plus we didn't want to spend half the evening taking pictures while all our friends and family were inside eating, drinking, and enjoying our party without us! We loved doing our pictures beforehand. It was wonderful, and the moment that he first saw me in my dress was all captured on both video and picture. We got to have that moment and share it only with our wedding party and immediate family, which was very special. So it is something that I recommend doing, and this way, you could take all your formals while its still light outside.
Autumn is such a beautiful time of year on the East Coast because its never oppressively hot, and its normally not too cold either. So whatever time of day you choose will be just perfect. From personal experience though, I can tell you that we were extremely happy with our 5:30pm ceremony, flowing right into a 6pm cocktail hour, and reception ending around 11pm.
We started taking our formal pictures around 4:00pm, leaving enough time to relax before our guests arrived.
Whatever time you decide upon, it will be a beautiful autumn wedding I am sure.
Kelley Lynn
email me at kelleyiskelley@gmail.com
Thank you so much! That really was helpful. We are probably going to have the ceremony around 2:30 to have the best of both worlds, daylight hours with pictures after the ceremony and some evening party time.
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