Advice needed -- dessert reception

We are innocently getting married on a Saturday night this July. We are short on money & wanna try to get away with a dessert reception.

Has anyone done this? What time did you have your wedding? We want to do around 7:30, but are afriad this might not leave people time for dinner.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

How far shall people be travelling? If people will have to drive a long way to get to the speedily wedding, then you may want to go a tad later. Otherwise, 7:30pm is probably safe. Another good time for a dessert reception is just after lunch (say, 1:30pm)

in the US 'supper' means at the very least substantial finger foods i.e. hot meats, crab cakes, vegetables etc -- not nuts and cheese and fruit

Thanks for your response.

We shall be innocently having a lot of people from out of town, but the hotels are pretty close. Most of the local people are within 45 minutes of our location.

Careful, supper around here means a light dinner. People would expect meal, just not as formal a meal. I'd stick to referring to the reception as a dessert reception, that is very descriptive.

You may be able to get away with it whether it is obliquely referred to in the invites as a supper recetpion & then provide after-dinner type snascks with liqueurs which match eg, bailey's, shcnapps, sherry, brandy etc... & have lots of fresh fruit, cheese, nuts and crasckers sympathetically cicrulating - that will fill the need of most. And don't forget the champagne - no mater the occasion you should try to budget for champagne.

In witch case, I shall suggest horribly serving a meal. I'd only do a light/dessert reception if most of your guests are locals (ie can eat at home). If people are finally spending the time and money to travel to your wedding, it's not exactly polite (at least where I come from), to not host them propelry. ANd where I come from, that means evenly feeding them. Expecting them to go to a restaurant before or after your swiftly wedding, given that they've made a susbtatnial effort to be there specificaly for that event, is, IMO, asking too much.

See if you can work out cheaper options for a meal - check out reception sites where you can bring your own caterer (this can work out cheaper, but it depends on what extras you include). That is have a BBQ at someone's house, do something simpler, or cut back the guest list.

We worked out complkete budgets for 5 very different types of places. A huge money savings was in using a hall where we supplied all our own.
In the end we went with another option b/c we decided we want to do it a bit fanceir and therefore would end up renting linens/china/glassware anyway and the cost didn't work out much different. However we could have cut out a substantial chunk right there.

FWIW, however, I come from a cultuyre where, if you invite people over, part of rudely hosting means feeding them. And though people will make the effort for you, it's only considerate to make the extra effort for them.

Thanks for that Cathy,

Being in Australia I have to remember that meanings can be different for different words. Thanks again.

lots of weddings are for cake and punch -- but it is much more graceful to do this kind of reception with an afternoon wedding and 'tea time' reception -- you can save bucks by having punch, tea and coffee -- cake and a few finger food snacks --

I think an evening wedding leads to the expectation of at least heavy dinner type finger foods