5.11.09

5? You mean 5:45, right?

Everyone in my family is notorious for being tardy. When I was itty bitty, an entire wedding banquet was held up because they insisted my Uncle be there before they start the speeches and food. He arrived two hours later.
Our friends are notorious for being late. For the boy's last birthday party, everyone came on time for the reservation, except for his nearest and dearest. They came about an hour and a half later, because y'know, the closer they are to us, the later they arrive.
The boy is horribly late all. the. time. I have gotten used to it over the years, but oh man. It's always been an issue. I can't tell you how many times I would show up at his work, only to have to wait another hour or two at his computer station before he was actually ready. Now you all know where I find the time to blog. :)
Me? I'm the girl waiting at the airport an hour beforehand and the one who arrives too early to interviews and decides to circle the building a few times before going in.

Here's how this is all related to weddings: we only have 5 hours at the vineyard for our party, and I don't want to waste any time so we can start food and dancing early to get the most out of our space. I want the ceremony to start at 5:15 at the latest, but knowing my family and our friends, I'm not sure if this will happen if I write "5 PM" on the invitation.

Obviously there are going to be people who arrive late. I can't really control that. But maybe I can control it an eensy weensy bit if I ask them arrive at "4:45"?

I don't know, what do you all think? Do you think people see "5 PM" and automatically know to get there early?

[Now that I've written this post for all the Internet to witness, it's inevitable that I will be the one who is late on that day.]




Moo

10 comments:

Born to be Mrs. Beever said...

Funny...I know how sucky it is when you have tons of wedding guests arrive late. Happens ALL the time. I am like you...I don't want to waste any of our time waiting for the ceremony to start because half the guests haven't shown up. For us, we are listing that the wedding is at 5 pm on the invitations...on our wedding website we are telling guests to arrive at 4:30 so that they can wander around the zoo (at our venue) before the ceremony starts. And I am anticipating a 5:30 pm start time. I am pretty adamant that we will start at 5:30 and have no qualms about listing the wedding as 5 pm on the invites. If I were you, I'd list 4:30 on your invites since you are on a much tighter schedule than we are...we don't have to be out til 11:30 pm (actually 12 am, but with cleanup we're giving it half an hour)! :)

julia::ordiarysaturdays.com said...

I think that happened to me, except that I knew I was going to be oblivious to time, and I was. I wasn't late for the ceremony, but only because I was REALLY unconcerned about picture time. Whoops. Maybe it's justification, but I think it's ok if people wait for you, but not if you wait for guests to arrive. So yeah, I'd probably edge up the start time on the invitation if I were you. But maybe have beverages available for the earlycomers.

BigAppleNosh said...

Hm, depends on the crowd. Some in my family like to be super-early for weddings, and others show up right on time. If you know a large portion of your guests might arrive late, you might want to try suggesting 4:45 to be on the safe side!

The Professional Bridesmaid said...

Unfortuantely, you will always have late comers.. So if you know you'll have a lot of time, maybe you need to put 4:45 SHARP!!!!!! And maybe a friendly reminder on your wedding website. (If it were me, I would put 4:30....I'm like you, always too early)

Kim@BowTiePhotography said...

Hey Julia - You only had one couple show up late that I saw, and I was in a position to notice ;)

Mo - I don't know, it seems like I'm the lone voice in favor of stating the actual start time. You would think that adults could plan when they need to leave the house to arrive on time for your wedding. It doesn't seem fair to make those people who are on time or early wait for 45+ minutes for the ceremony to start, you know? And then if you're doing pictures after the ceremony, those guests will have to wait probably an hour+ for the reception to start.

I like Mrs. Beever's idea of telling people to enjoy the ceremony site before the wedding starts!

Mo said...

@Kim--Thanks for your feedback! This is actually what my sister said to me, she doesn't think we should change the time at all and doesn't think people should be made to wait if they are on time.
In her words, "If they're late, screw them. We're starting when you want to start."

chelsea said...

we had family that was an hour late to the rehearsal. like, his mom. we started the ceremony with or without, but we told everyone in our family and wedding party to be there 2 hours before the ceremony start. don't know if that's actually advice, but its what we did.

joyce said...

Oh gosh.. I know how that feels. I like to give my friends a hard time whenever they're late but hey, I've been guilty of that myself. I think there should be an exception for weddings though where all the guests should arrive on time before the bride (hey, it's your grand entrance!). I agree with most people, if you're on a tight schedule, put an early time on so everyone would be there and seated by the time you walk down the aisle!

cupcake wedding said...

I hate being late. So Im going to try to start on time, even if half the crowd is not there.

No waiting for impatient little me.

Abbie said...

I don't think they will automatically think to come early, unfortunately. We arrived at our reception and found that there were only about 30 out of 110 people there. Kind of lame. For our ceremony, there were still people getting there when the procession music was playing!

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