3pm ceremony - schedule and food

[Brideintheheadlights]

Novice bride back again with another daft query! Our ceremony is at 3pm (registrar, so around 30 minutes I guess). Reception is in pub function room approximatley 3 minute walk from ceremony. We have circa 50 day guests, with another 20ish in the evening. Aiming for a fairly laid back atmosphere; the pub is nice but not fancy. We have chosen a buffet during the evening, but not sure how to go on the wedding breakfast. The pub's usual menu is nacho's, chicken, salads, ribs, pizza's, gourmet burgers etc. They can offer more meat/fish/veg type meals if we would like but probably only 1 or 2 options. 2 other options we're considering - picking a selection from the usual main menu and letting people choose from that in advance, or possibly just having a large buffet as the main meal, dispensing with sit down meal, table plans etc, so essentially a buffet in 2 parts (which would save us around £850 on food overall). What would you think about these options as a guest? Also, what would you suggest as timimgs for a 3pm wedding? Would the time drag too much if we didn't have a sit-down meal? We really want to avid our guests being bored (happened to us as guests recently). Room is vacated at midnight latest, it will be a spotify playlist, not band etc. Thanks!

I like the option of choosing a few meals and letting people pick in advance.

Think that would better compliment an evening buffet.

I put 3 starters, mains and desserts on the wedding invites and had people pre order (24 guests).

On the evening then I had hot beef carved at the buffet with gravy, baps, home made chips.

Oh, we also had a 3pm ceremony so our went

3pm-3.30pm Ceremony
3.30-4.30pm Drinks, photos mingling
4.30-6.30pm Meal and speeches
6.30-7.30pm Hotel bar for drinks while they changed the room around
7.30pm evening do started, more guests came
8.30pm food
11.30pm end

I am someone who panics when there's no food, so ours looked something like this (it was a vow renewal after an elopement but still ran like a proper wedding)....

2.30pm - most guests to our house, big sandwich platters
3.30pm ceremony (small ceremony with 15 people
4pm - private area in a pub, picky bits on platters (chips, chicken things etc)
4.45pm - leave pub for evening venue, arriving at 5pm
5pm - 7pm drinks, speeches, first dance
7.15pm - main feast (pie and mash with option for seconds)

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz thank you, that's so useful. Did you find that that was about the right length of time for each part? I'm worried that things moght be rushed, but we have already moved our ceremony from 1pm to 3pm as we didn't want people to get bored, or have too much hanging about.

Thanks @graphitehit . I was worried people might think the usual pub food was not 'fancy' enough, but then we aren't 'fancy' people! Also we would give people the choice to choose 1, 2, or 3 courses so food is not wasted (I was recently a wedding guest and didn't even touch my dessert as I was full, I felt sad as it had probably cost the bride and groom £8/£10).

Yes I think it worked fine. It helped that the daytime was small, as this meant we were all so super close to each other that the mingling just felt like we were all eound each others house - no small talk, whose side are you on etc.

Our best man's speech seemed to go on forever so that will have taken up a chunk of time, but otherwise it was perfect. I'd have had an even later ceremony if I could get away with it, but 3pm worked totally fine.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz thank you!