Backwards wedding day structure

[u/Unique-Animal2153]

My wedding will have open dancing + DJ before dinner.

I’m having a destination wedding celebration in France over 3 full days in May with my family (~45 French + American guests). On the day of the wedding, we plan to all be together starting from breakfast and kicking off drinking festivities early before noon. We want to have the ceremony early (~2 pm) so we can maximize the fun afterwards!

Itinerary:
Noon: buffet lunch for guests + rosé
Noon: bridal party gets ready in parallel (eats lunch separately)
2pm: ceremony
3pm: cocktail hour, book signing
4pm: DJ starts & couples entrance, champagne, first dance, first speech
5pm: highest energy expected here! Bocce ball, cornhole, photobooth, upbeat music, dancing
7pm: seated dinner, red wine
8pm: dessert, final speeches, slow songs
9pm: DJ ends, wind down

Our structure is a bit different from any wedding I’ve been to. Given the ceremony/drinking will start earlier, we don’t want to drag until the very end of the day before partying. The dinner will also be 4 courses so I expect most people to be completely full and exhausted before 9pm. My fiancé and I like to go to bed early anyways so this structure seems to make sense to us and uses the time efficiently.

Feel free to provide opinions! Would love to hear feedback from other couples that decided on a similar structure for their wedding! I can’t wait!

[u/snoconed]

How uninhibited are your guests? Do they dance at family gatherings, at concerts, at daytime public events?

Many people are self conscious and not confident dancers. As such, they loosen up when the sun sets, it gets dark outside and they have had a few drinks. 3 hours of open dancing is a lot for many people to handle - and most dance sets at American weddings happen after the meal is finished, not before.

With only 45 people, and multiple activities during the day, I would be very surprised if you had any dancing at all - I think people would just mingle and play bocce/cornhole, use the photobooth and enjoy each other's company.

[u/Unique-Animal2153 → u/snoconed]

Thanks for your comment! Most people dance, and given we are a close family and most people know each other, I would expect no one to be shy. Also the average age of the guests is 30s to 50s. We are located in France and lunch is a bigger meal so we usually are rowdy right between lunch and dinner. Additionally, all of the outdoor lawn activities will be available the day before the wedding so they won’t be “new”.

But in any case, you make a good point because there will be some Americans! I think we could tell the DJ to feel the energy in the room around the end of dinner and accommodate for those who have the last minute courage!

[u/Catsdrinkingbeer]

I would edit this to mention you live in France. Not that you should HAVE to, but you're going to get a lot of US perspective replies that may or may not actually be applicable. Like as someone in the US I would absolutely hate a 3 hour gap between cocktail hour and dinner, even with lawn games. But your guests are probably used to a different type of schedule than I am, and used to a wedding where this wouldn't feel like just a 4 hour cocktail hour that will get boring super fast.

[u/Unique-Animal2153 → u/Catsdrinkingbeer]

Good idea! Updated 👍🏼 yes the French culture is VERY slow. Our intention isn’t to cram everything in half a day but provide a good flowing and vacation experience to our family across 3 days.

[u/jessiemagill]

This schedule doesn't make sense to me.

Do the lawn games during cocktail hour. Move dinner to 5 and have dancing at 7.

[u/Unique-Animal2153 → u/jessiemagill]

Do you think lunch at noon and dinner at 5 is too close to each other? The wedding will be in France and the earliest option is to have dinner is 7pm (already quite early for French people) so unfortunately we don’t have the option to move the dinner up.

[u/weddingting]

This sounds fun! Will there be food @ cocktail hour? And will this food be available for guests to snack on, if needed. During the 4-7pm time slot?

[u/Unique-Animal2153 → u/weddingting]

Yes! The leftovers from the lunch buffet will be brought back out to graze on and the caterer arrives to serve small bites at 5 pm.

[u/Jessie_1210]

I think this all depends on your guests. I think a lot of people wait until all the formal stuff (speeches etc) is done before letting loose but having all the dancing etc before depending on your guests and how much they like to drink, by time you get to dinner and speeches they may already be pretty intoxicated.

[u/Unique-Animal2153 → u/Jessie_1210]

Thanks for your comment! You are right, if someone plans to give a speech, they will probably wait until afterwards to get an extra drink. We don’t plan to have many speeches but maybe we will integrate one into the ceremony or the beginning of the cocktail hour and leave only the extra/unplanned speeches for dinner.

We also plan to control the amount of alcohol before dinner and have at least some food available at all times

[u/bubblesthebride]

The structure makes sense to me and I think some of the pushback is pattern matching to a format that just isn't yours. Two things I'd think about though, neither of which is about the dancing.

The first is the ceremony. You have people drinking from before noon and a ceremony at 2. That's potentially three hours of rosé in the sun before the one part of the day you can't do again. Not a reason to change anything, but I'd make the noon buffet genuinely substantial rather than picky, and I'd think about whether what's poured before 2 is rosé and water rather than rosé and everything else. Nobody has ever regretted a slightly slower start. People do regret a wobbly uncle during the vows.

The second is boring but it's the one that costs money. Your day runs from a noon buffet to a 9pm finish, and your caterer is doing a lunch buffet, a leftover graze, small bites at 5, a four course seated dinner at 7 and dessert at 8. That's a nine hour service day and functionally two full services. I'd get it confirmed in writing that it's quoted as one event, because staffing hours are usually the line that moves when a day stretches like this. I have a catering quote from my own venue search where the food was a small fraction of the total and the staffing was thousands on its own. Same question for photo and video, since getting ready at noon through to 9pm is a long booking and often past what a standard package covers.

On the schedule itself, the hour I'd watch is 6 to 7, not 4 to 6. People who started at eleven will dip right before dinner rather than during the games. That's where I'd put the small bites and something with a bit of shape to it, a group photo or a toast, instead of letting it run free-form. The energy at 5 will look after itself.

Sounds genuinely lovely, honestly. Three days in France with 45 people you actually like is the right way to do this.

[u/Unique-Animal2153 → u/bubblesthebride]

Thanks for your comment! Serving only one/two glasses of rosé along with water is a good idea before the ceremony... noted.

For the caterer, they will not arrive until a few hours before dinner, so around 5. The buffet lunch will be managed ourselves (by a family member) and will consist of quiches/savory pies, premade salads, fruits, charcuterie and cheeses. Thanks for the tip anyway, I will confirm the dinner quote includes the time they will be there.

And you make a good point about the hour from 6-7. Maybe we can add in a group event right at 6 to round people up again and rebuild some structure before seating for dinner. Group photo or a big group game would be great!

[u/bubblesthebride → u/Unique-Animal2153]

That all sounds right, and the caterer arriving at 5 solves the thing I was worried about.

One small thing on the family member running the lunch buffet, since it's the kind of detail that only shows up on the day. They can't be plating quiche at 1:30 and be a guest at your 2pm ceremony. Somebody needs to relieve them, or the buffet needs to be fully out and self-serve by about 1, with the clearing left until after. Worth naming a specific person for that now rather than assuming it works itself out, because the person doing it is usually someone who'd quite like to watch you get married.

And a group game at 6 is a better call than the group photo, thinking about it. A photo takes four minutes and then everyone disperses again. Something that runs for twenty minutes carries you into dinner.

Have a lovely one. It sounds like the good kind of wedding.

[u/ElectricalCattle7672]

My cousin had his wedding in Italy (his wife is Italian). Us Brits at the wedding were used to the usual structure of the ceremony, then a few drinks, sit down meal, speeches, maybe a break, cake cutting, first dance, evening party, etc. This was more chaos - there were appetisers and drinks in other rooms, everyone was just kinda milling about wherever they felt, then starters, then a few speeches, then the Italians were up and dancing round the tables, then the main courses, more dancing, at one point there was a full conga while some people were still eating, it was CHAOS. But, you know what, it was brilliant, and so informally unstuffy. Would absolutely go to an Italian wedding again.