Help - How are we gonna keep 100 people entertained and fed for 13hrs!

Scotsbride

mjonline wrote: »

Hi everyone

Apologies in advance for a ridiculously long post – I hope you make it to the end, with hopefully some great advice to follow J

So my lovely fianc! and I will be getting married in August 2012, yippee! We have our Church and Reception venue booked, which is great, however the timings of everything is a bit manic.

Here are some background factors which need to be considered prior to any responses:

It is now too late to change our ceremony venue. We require a church venue due to our religious beliefs, but due to a number of logistical factors, my fathers ill health being the primary consideration, we're marrying outside of our parish. As such, to be able to marry in August 2012, in a church outside our parish we need to attend 6months of church services, a minimum of 2x per month. A church ceremony is imperative for us, this cannot be changed. Due to the legal requirements re attendance, it is now too late to chose another church.

On the date that we have set, our church only has availability at 11am, due to other ceremony's taking place throughout the day. We had hoped for a start time between 11am and 1pm to ensure we got tons of photos during different parts of what I hope will be a glorious bank holiday weekend, so this isn't too tragic.

However, this means that we have now got the unenviable task of keeping 100 people fed, watered and entertained for 13hours, yes, you read that right 13 HOURS lol!

We would really value your guidance on how to make this achievable, enjoyable and most importantly affordable for all. I’ve detailed below our rough timings for the day, however if you can offer alternatives which you believe would be better please speak up, all advice and guidance appreciated!

10:30 - Pre ceremony- Harpist
11am - Ceremony – (NB: Neither the Church nor the ceremony time can be moved)
11:45am Photographs –
12:15- Drinks and canap! reception (For those not in formal photos) – Harpist also playing in the background during this time.
2pm - Wedding breakfast (2 courses) and Speeches (We’re only going for 2 courses as we’re struggling to get the venue to come down on their prices, we’ve negotiated, the canap!s and 2 courses, for the original price of a full 3 courses) I don’t want a buffet this is why we’re having a formal sit down meal...
5pm – Two options
A) - Break/Recess
For all guests who have travelled from afar and have accommodation either at the venue or close by which is approximately 80% of party)
we will suggest that they retire to their rooms/hotels to freshen up and relax before the evening entertainment

- Garden games/sports day/Pub quiz/Mr & Mrs quiz/Karoke
For those guests who are local, but not close enough to go home and so do not have hotel accommodation we are thinking to do a mixture of 1 or some of the above suggestions. All them apart from the Karoke I think can be done quite cheaply – Would especially value thoughts and suggestion on what our lovely guest can do in this section
7:30pm – Evening do starts, with a DJ
8:30pm – BBQ catering (chicken, hotdogs, burgers, fish, and salad) for approx 50% - i.e catering for 50 people .
12am- Bed!


So as you can see, its a long day, and lot of food and drinks to cater for - any thoughts on how to cut this down bearing in mind that

1 - Neither the start time, nor venues are negotiable
2 – I don’t want to have a buffet wedding breakfast

Many thanks in advances formidable MSE’ers! J

:beer:

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