What Should Your Wedding Timeline Look Like?

It has hard to know what should your wedding timeline look like when you're early into planning or you're doing it all yourself. Take it from a team who's done hundreds of weddings, we've seen it all! These are some of the tips that might help the flow of your wedding be seamless.

1. Getting ready: You want to give the bride as much time as possible. If you're getting ready with bridesmaids even more so. Depending on ceremony time and number of bridesmaids, you'd like to give yourself at least 3 to 4 hours to get ready (as you should be fully ready 1.5 to 2 hours before the ceremony). Bride should be the second to last to get ready. Make sure you tell photographer, videographer, and content creator what time they should be arriving and capturing by.

2. In between getting ready and ceremony, the couple might want take first look or touch footage, exchange personal vows, or do an exchange of gifts with family members. (Some couples opt to have their wedding pictures taken before ceremony to save time after ceremony) So you want to make sure you set time apart for that as well. You don't want to be late to your own wedding!

3. Ceremony: Having multiple conversations with your officiant is essential to narrow the timeline of your ceremony. Making sure they stay on track is also very important because it sets the tone for the rest of the day. In order to keep everyone engaged and in the moment, the ceremony script should not be more than 30 minutes. If you include party walking down the aisle, vows, ring exchange, and party exit altogether it should be about 45 minutes.

4. Cocktail Hour: This should be no longer than an hour. Within that hour you should be able to take all necessary footage (not counting golden hour footage). If you go over cocktail hour, it's important to remember that you might have booked photographer, videographer, content creator, or even DJ for a set amount of hours and every time something gets pushed back the timeframe you booked those services for are now shortened. During cocktail DJ should play elevator, jazz, romantic, chill (not dancing) music and if you have a photobooth it should be up and running.

5. Reception: This is where it is ESSENTIAL to time crunch. Everything happens so fast and it is extremely easy to get sidetracked. There are two different ways that you can tackle special moments (special dances, toasts, cake cutting, etc.). People are usually hungry (ESPECIALLY the bride and groom) so here's the timeline we've seen work best:

   • Grand Entrance- 10 min at the most (This includes entrance of bridesmaids and groomsman)

   • Prayer- 1-2 minutes (we are all thankful for food and celebrating the couple; however, people are hungry, kids are tired and the foods getting cold)

   • Dinner- 1 Hour. Head table should be served first, then immediate family. After that, all vendors should be able to serve themselves or be served, they need to be ready for toasts and special dances within 30 minutes of dinner starting.  (photobooth should be closed for dinner and special dances).

   • Cake Cutting- Once the bride and groom are done eating, most of them choose to do a private cake cutting (it just means they don't want everyone getting up and taking their phones out while the photographer, videographer, content creator are taking their shots). It is still done in front of everyone, it's just not announced.

   • Speeches/toasts- 10-15 minutes at most (Optional: 45 minutes into dinner. This way everyone is basically done with their food and it doesn't cut into the dance portion). Everyone wants to congratulate the happy couple, but lets be honest, that's what the card attached to the gift is for. Usually to keep a smooth and steady pace, you want the Maid of Honor, Best Man, and lastly the Bride and Groom to give speeches, lasting no longer than 2-3 minutes each. Optional is fathers of the bride and groom or a second bridesmaid and groomsman but that's adding more time.

   • Special Dances- 10 minutes. The order is usually Mother/Son, Father/Daughter and lastly First Dance.

   • Open Dance Floor- Usually 3-4 hours. Once dance floor is officially open the couple can join in for a few songs and then they'll leave for Golden Hour Footage (30 minutes) this way they don't get too sweaty.

   • Sparkler Send Off- 10 minutes before the end of the party the DJ will announce the sparkler send off and everyone should be escorted by staff outside where they'll get that prepared. Once every single guest is outside, the bride and groom should take a moment to themselves and enjoy a private last dance. At the end of the song, everything should be ready for them to enjoy their send off.

6. Alternate- After the grand entranced some couples choose to do their first dance and special dances followed by prayer. Speeches are done at the same time previously stated and for open dance floor they ask everyone to join them on the dance floor to take a group picture immediately followed by open dance floor announcement (this way everyone is already on the dance floor!)

To give you an idea, this is what your itinerary would look like:  (Example start time: 3:30pm)

Getting Ready:

9:00am- Bride & Bridesmaids meet at location

11:30am- Photographer, videographer, content creator arrive

12:00pm- Groom & Groomsman meet at location

1:00pm- First touch, private exchange of vows, gift exchange

Ceremony

3:00pm- Guest arrival

3:15pm- Prelude music

3:30pm- Wedding Party walk down

3:40pm- Officiant's Address

4:10pm- Bride & Groom Exit

4:15pm- Wedding party and B&G should be leaving to take pictures

4:20pm Cocktail Hour

5:20pm- DJ or MC makes intro announces (tells people to have a seat (bar closes, photobooth closes)

5:30pm- Grand Entrance (wedding party first, B&G second)

5:40pm- Prayer

5:45pm- Dinner

6:15pm- Cake Cutting

6:30pm- Speeches

6:45pm- Special Dances

7:00pm- Open Dance Floor

7:15pm- Golden Hour Footage

10:45pm- Last song

10:50pm- Sparkler Send Off Announcement

10:55pm- Private Last Dance

11:00pm- Sparkler Send Off

Whether you have a planner/coordinator or not, this can give you an idea of what your day will look like. No one knows you better than you so if you know you tend to run behind give yourself extra time. You don't want to run out of your booked hours with your professionals and have moments that were not captured (sadly, we've seen it happen). We hope this helps and hope your wedding is as seamless and stressfree as

every bride and groom deserve it to be!