I bet I've been hundreds of Jewish weddings -- I'm married to a Jewish clergyman. I live in a different part of the country from lowspark, which may explain some of the small differences in the way we see things usually done.
Sunday is a very usual day for a Jewish wedding, as we don't do them on Friday night or until after sunset on Saturdays (which makes a Saturday night in the summer pretty impossible).
I've seen pretty much the timeline that lowspark sets out, but it's usually a little different in my community. The biggest difference is that there is almost always dancing well before the end of dinner and even before it's served -- in fact, often the band or DJ is playing some great dance music as the doors are opened for dinner and people come in from the cocktail hour. (In our experience, that works great -- people put their place cards and pocketbooks on their tables, the jackets and sometimes the high heels come off, and the guests go to the dance floor and dance for quite a while. Often we start with the hora and other Jewish folk dances, in fact, and they can go on without a break for a LONG time. It really gets the party going and everyone feeling like a big, merry group. We saw that work so well enough times that we did that at both our kids' weddings.)
We don't usually have so many "special" dances -- usually just bride and groom, and father and daughter, which is joined by any other combinations (mother son, etc.), and then spontaneously by other close relatives. I never see a dance for attendants. Toasts and speeches can come any time. I've never seen them during the cocktail hour, as was done at the wedding you went to; it seems like it undercuts the mingling function as well as keeping people on their feet while they are listening, so maybe that's why most people don't do it.
If I'm doing the math right, and assuming a 60 minute cocktail hour (sometimes it's 45, sometimes 75 or 90), plus a few minutes for moving everyone from ceremony to cocktail area and then to dining room, you all were in the dining room at most 40 minutes before the salad was served. That is a little longer than usual, but if they were doing long horas and other "special" dances before that, and people are into it (you said the "dancing was clearly being enjoyed" at this wedding, which usually means the band keeps going on the hora until they see it dying down), it's not unusual, especially adding in a few minutes for a welcome from the hosts and blessing the bread.
So it's not at all uncommon for dinner to start after quite a while. It sounds like you felt this was poor hosting, and I understand why, because it's not what you are used to, but it isn't unusual for us. I bet you noticed everyone eating LOTS of substantial appetizers during the cocktail hour! Did others leave only 90 minutes into the dinner and dancing? I might have worried that something was wrong; our receptions usually last at least 3 hours after the cocktail hour.
Anyway, it sounds like you had a good time! Did you dance the hora? Did you like the ceremony? Was it your first Jewish wedding? What other differences did you notice?