When to do a dessert party

[goodmorningirl]

Hello everyone,

When we think about our reception We see it going from like 7-11/12. We really want a party with lots of dancing. We also want a dessert party. How would you or have you done the dessert party without it completely coming in the middle of your reception? I know we could have it the day before the wedding but we'd rather it be on the same day.

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions

 

[DisneyBrideToni]

If you do a later ceremony, you could do the dessert party for your cocktail hour and then move on to another location for your reception.

 

[pezaddict231]

We had the same issue, DF really wanted a night time wedding. So we're doing a 5 pm ceremony. I really want to do a DP too. We're plan to do a Wishes DP at Sago Cay. So our wedding will look like this:
Cocktail hour 6-7
reception: 7-9:30
9:30-10:30 Dessert Party
10:30-12 am back to reception for dancing

We have to extend our reception by an hour which does incur additional cost, but there's really no other way to do it. I think of the DP this way like a viennese hour, it just won't be in the ballroom and we'll have fireworks!

You could also do the 2:30 ceremony and extend the reception by an hour and go right to the DP from there, your wedding would end at 10:30pm, but I felt like that would be a really long day and it would cost us more b/c we'd have to add additional photography and bar service.

If you do the 7:30 ceremony, you could do a DP at Epcot from 8:30-9:30, but then your dinner is really late and your reception wouldn't end until 1:30, which might be kind of late for some people, depends on your guests.

 

[goodmorningirl]

DisneyBrideToni-- This was my original thought. But then I got confused. A cocktail hour is usually before the wedding so if I do the dessert party for the cocktail hour my reception won't start till 9:30?

pezaddict231-- I think I like the idea of the 7:30 wedding. Does the dessert party have to be an hour long? I would rather just go out a few minutes before the fireworks and spend more time dancing lol

Thank you both for your responses and I appreciate any more ideas.

 

[pezaddict231]

You're welcome, we were trying to figure all this stuff out last week, so I definitely went through all our options!

We thought about the 7:30 too, but I didn't like the idea of a 9:30 dinner, because if my wedding weren't until 7:30, I'd be trying to go to a park in the morning and then I'd be falling asleep at my sweetheart table!

I guess it doesn't have to be that long if you don't want it to, but you will need time for people to get food and stuff, that's why they start a 1/2 hour before and then the fireworks are about 15 minutes, so maybe you could do 45 minutes.

Even if you do the full hour, you will still have 4 hours for dinner and dancing. If you wanted even longer it is $400 to extend the room and $250 for an additional hour for the DJ, and any food or beverage that you choose to continue. My planner suggested cutting bar service during dinner so that the additional hour of bar service didn't really cost any extra.

Maybe do a buffet meal? That would probably take less time than a plated dinner with a few different courses.

We also thought about doing a 2:30 ceremony, and extending the reception by an hour. Then have a Wishes DP from 9:30 - 10:30, it would end a little early but ending at 10:30 is not so different from ending at 11. We decided not to do it though because we'd have to extend our photography too and with all the extensions it just added up to too much. Plus, I thought it would just be too long of a day and our wedding is in August, so all our pictures would be in the horrible heat of the afternoon! So we decided to stick with 5 pm.

 

[Pinkerbell1983]

We did lots of dancing at our wedding. We got married at 2.30pm and had the reception from 3.30pm, we danced until around 9.30pm and then walked over to Sago Cay for the fireworks, which started at 10pm, and then went straight back to the Whitehall Room for dancing again. We were only at Sago Cay for approx half an hour and it was nice to have a break from the dancing to rest our feet so we were all ready to boogie again until midnight!

 

[goodmorningirl]

Thanks to both of you for your advice. I know our big concern is not having enough time to dance but both your options seem to leave enough time for that. I guess I won't really know what exactly will happen until I actually have a wedding planner.

Thank you for all your advice!