Please I need some help...church/reception time frame

OK my Fi and I booked our reception hall over the thanksgiving holoday ( We are both from Albany so we we only have 1 weekwnd a month to get all the planning done)


We know the church(roman catholic) is avaiable but unfortunatly we can only afford a saturday afternoon wedding which He and I were happy about. I just got off the phone with the church and the first nuptual can't start until 11 AM......our coctail hour is to begin at 12:30 (btw the curch and the reception hall are about 20 minutes away from each other)

My Fi and I are bummed we do not want to rush through our wedding. I have tried calling around to different churches ....they will not marry couples who are outside of their church. So we are only seeing 2 options here

1- get married at the reception hall
2- Find a non-demonitional church in the area.

Also just to add more confussion to this story. My Fi has a R.C priest he would like to marry us.


Please I have no clue what to do or where to begin...should we just get married at the reception hall. I am afraid it just wont be formal enough




help!!!!!!!!!!!

I have kinda the same issue. My wedding starts at 11 and the cocktail hour at 12:45. I don't think it is going to be a big problem. Yeah i might miss some of the cocktail hour. But i guess that is ok with us. We don't want anyone to see us until we are introduced anyway.

But as a suggestion:
1. get a photographer that knows your reception hall...So he/she is not running around trying to figure out where to snap shots.
and
2. Do not do a full wedding ceremony (ie. with mass) and do not do a receiving line. This will cut down on time to take pics.

If you have your heart set on getting married in the church, you might have to make a few small compromises. First, you probably won't be able to have the full mass, but the ceremony-only thing, which is really just as formal. Also, no receiving line - wait until the cocktail hour and do a modified one there. Finally, you might have to have pics taken only at the hall, so I hope it has pretty outdoor and indoor areas (I'm sure it does!).

Then your day would look like this:
11-11:40 ceremony
11:45-12:05 travel to reception hall
12:05-12:35 pics - All the photographers I met with said that all formal, posed shots could be done in 15-30 minutes.
12:35 join guests for CH!

I don't think you'll want to get married any earlier than 11am anyway. My aunt got married then and we had to get up at the crack of dawn!!!

My other thought is this...will the church allow your FH's priest to do the ceremony? Perhaps if they will (my church said visiting clergy was OK) maybe you can start 15mins early. It sounds like that's all you really need anyway, about 15 minutes extra.

Thanks guys..you are already making me feel better