With such a deeply ingrained habit, it would help to get some ideas on how you all manage expectations at work to prevent digging yourselves into holes and keeping reasonable hours so you can protect your personal time.
I think that might be the problem. It's hard to quote big time projects like that.
Think about breaking the project into smaller pieces say 1/3's or better 1/4s and release smaller scoped mini-projects into production.
This gives your users something to start playing with and hopefully be more productive earlier on (rather than wait 3 months).
It looks like you're doing "Waterfall". Might want to read about "Agile" for more tips.