Ask the Wedding Planning Expert

That is originally what I wanted for my reception - we originally wanted an early afternoon ceremony followed by a mid-afternoon reception where we'd serve light fares - fingers sandwiches and such.  My mother was really upset when I told her that.  She says that if we are going to ask people to travel (we've getting married in Massachusetts and 95% of the guests live within 2 hours) then we have to serve them a meal.  We wanted a more simple reception to save on costs as we are on an extreemly tight budget.  Thankfully we found a solution - we moved our wedding up one week from May 2 to April 25 (2009) as April is still "winter" at our reception venue and thus the same package is half the price so we still stayed within our budget and my mother gets the sit down dinner she wants (yes, my parents are helping out financially)

Its not going to be an evening ceremony (5:45pm) followed by a reception running from 7pm-midnight with a sitdown dinner.  Its going to be a little more elaborate than my fiance and I originally wanted but considering my parents have been generous enough to offer some fiancial contribution we wanted to honor their requests as they weren't too crazy.