That always amazes me. For me the dance portion is very rarely less than 4 hours some nights it's 5-6 hours
Canadians have LONG ASS weddings.
6 hours for ceremony/cocktails/reception has totally become the norm in my market for the past 6 years. Some are 6.5 hour...Some are 5.5 hours, but most are 6 hours.
Prior to that they were in a trend of being longer affairs over time, and the norm seemed to be 5 hours total from 2008 - 2014. Prior to that, most of the time it was just a 4 hour reception, OR often the ceremony was inside the reception hall, and they still kept everything 4 hours or maybe 4.5 hours total.
Most weddings prior to 2008 were typically 7 p.m. to 11 p..m and some Saturdays you could book a Noon to 4 p.m. and then go and do a 7 to 11 or 11:30 p.m. wedding.
Now 90% of weddings around here are like 4 to 10 p.m. or 5 to 11 p.m. or sometimes 5:30 to 11:30 p.m. I might book one, maybe two 7 hour long weddings a year. ...Very rare to book a wedding starting early in the day...and if you do, it often goes to 4 or 5 p.m. so you are unable to book a night time wedding after it because starting weddings at 7 p.m. just doesn't happen any more.
At a 7 hour wedding...What usually happens at the ones I have done is the bride and groom have a real long cocktail hour. Like 90 minutes to 2 hours long, then dinner happens to be stretched longer than other weddings because the bride/groom take their sweet time talking to everyone...So they still don't have more than 3 hours of dancing after dinner.
I have done maybe 4 weddings in all my years that had 4+ hours of dancing. Two of them, were real long Indian weddings...TOO LONG for me. 7 Hours is LONG ENOUGH to do everything in my opinion!