Oh my gosh! That is a LONG day! Kind of nice though, you truly get the whole day celebrating together with all your friends & family.
Over here in my neck of the woods, a modest wedding, which is what we are having is VERY expensive and usually most halls put a 5-6 hour cap on the time. We have the hall from 11am - 4pm. I am really bummed because the day will go something like 11:10am ceremony until 1130am, then 45 mins for pics for us and cocktail hour for guests. Then 1230 introductions into the dinner, first dances, then dinner at 1, cake cutting about 115, then dinner done by 230, then dancing only until 4. I really really wanted to get more time, but the hall won't do it.
To get a couple more hours would have meant renting the hall for the rest of the night, then they make you book the rooms surrounding the hall since they can't use them because of the noise. Then the DJ is an additional $100 an hour! (I went into the wrong business I swear!) So for a moderate wedding like that, we are looking at $72 per guest for just dinner. $4 per guest for just dessert, we have a cash bar because we can't afford to pay for drinks for our guests, we have 75 guests and our wedding is around $15k!
I wonder why weddings are decreasing, prices are too outrageous for anyone to afford in this economy! We estimated our favors cost about $4 per guest, not too bad.