Ready to build your wedding day timeline?
A seamless timeline is the key to a stress-free wedding day.
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As professional wedding planners, we’ve created hundreds of timelines for our couples and hundreds more vendor-specific timelines to ensure they have every little detail they need to make your day the best. We’re sharing our tips to help you create your own timeline — but the best advice we can give you is to hire a professional wedding planner to do this for you!
How to Build Your Wedding Day Timeline
A wedding timeline provides structure to your day. If you don’t intentionally plan each moment and accurately estimate timing, things will get chaotic and guests will sense your wedding is disorganized. Talk about stressful!
There are so many unique-to-your-event factors that will impact the timing of your day, from how many hours are included in your venue rental to how many people are having hair/makeup done, how many hours you’ve booked your photographer or DJ/band, your guest count and dinner service style, and even your venue’s music curfew.
To ensure a seamless flow for the day, someone needs to connect with each vendor to create a master timeline that accounts for your expectations for the day and your event specifics. If you’ve hired a professional wedding planner or coordinator (*wise decision, friend!), this job falls on us! If not, use the tips below to confidently create your wedding day timeline.
10 Key Details to Consider When Building Your Wedding Day Timeline
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1 — Venue Rental Hours
What time does your rental begin? Is that time the same as when you can arrive to the getting ready rooms? Some venues have an “early access” fee to add hours in the morning, which may be necessary if you have a lot of gals getting hair & makeup done, or a lot of decor to set up.
Additionally, when does your venue rental end? Is that guest curfew or vendor curfew? Some venues allow vendors an extra hour to teardown and load out; never assume, be sure to review your contract and ask!
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2 — Ceremony Start Time
When is your preferred ceremony start time? Sometimes your venue will dictate this based on their rules. For example, at public golf courses or museums, sometimes the earliest time to start is 5:00 PM. Or at a church, sometimes your ceremony has to be at 2:00 PM. You might also consider the time of year — you may want to begin earlier in the winter months to ensure there is still sunlight!
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3 — Hair & Makeup Schedule
How many people will have their hair and makeup professionally done? How long will each service take? And how many hair stylists/makeup artists will be on-site? These factors will determine how early you have to start getting ready, and how soon photos can begin.
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4 — First Look
Will you and your soon-to-be spouse share a first look or do you want to wait for the big reveal at your ceremony? If you have a first look, you can get most photos done pre-ceremony. Without a first look, you will be using your cocktail hour for photos instead of mingling with guests. Read this blog post for pros/cons of first looks.
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5 — Planned Ceremony Length
How long will your ceremony be? A more traditional church ceremony is often 45-60 minutes. With a non-religious ceremony, it will often be ~15-30 minutes. Factors that will add time include readings, sermons, performing a unity ritual or ring warming, or if you plan to host a receiving/greeting line (seriously plan on +30-45 minutes if you want to host a receiving line).
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6 — Ceremony & Reception Location
If your ceremony is being held at a location other than where the reception will be, you need to allot time for travel between venues. Will your reception be starting immediately after, or will there be an hour or 2 before social hour begins? Also consider if you’ll want to make any picture stops along the way before arriving to the reception.
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7 — Room Flip
If your ceremony and reception are at the same venue, are there separate spaces to use or will everything happen in the same room? If a room flip is necessary after the ceremony (resetting chairs and putting up tables for dinner), you will usually have an extended social hour (90 minutes versus 60).
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8 — Dinner Service
How will dinner be served; buffet, plated, food truck? Service style and guest count will impact how long your caterer needs to serve everyone, which affects when speeches happen. Generally, you should plan at least 60-90 minutes for a nice leisurely meal.
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9 — Music & Dancing
Many DJs may offer unlimited hours of music, but others only include a set number of hours and most bands start at 3 hours of live music. Depending on when dinner ends and your venue curfew, you may have to add time if you want the dance floor open longer. Also consider if your venue imposes a music curfew, which may mean a hard stop at 10 PM in some cities.
Most professionals will agree, 3-4 hours of dancing is perfect!
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10 — Photography Coverage
Once you’ve drafted a timeline with the above details, ask your photographer for a potential photo schedule that would fit the flow of your day. Consider how many hours are included in their package. You may have to prioritize between getting ready coverage in the morning versus more end-of-night photos on the dance floor.
They may also provide suggestions for moving dinner/dance timing, but be sure to run this by your caterer to confirm the times make sense with the anticipated dinner service timing.
Ultimately, a thoughtfully planned timeline will make your day flow seamlessly, without making you feel rushed or leaving too much time for guests to get bored waiting for the next major moment.
If you haven’t already, download our Wedding Timeline Template to help draft your day in an organized format.
And if you’re ready for a completely customized timeline for your event, let’s chat!
Once your timeline is built, who gets a copy?
If you haven’t hired a professional wedding coordinator, you will be the one distributing final timelines to all of your vendors (including the venue), the wedding party, and any wedding day VIPs (immediate family, officiant, ceremony readers or ushers, etc.).
We recommend sharing the timeline with vendors about 3-4 weeks before your wedding date. If any vendors have concerns/input, this gives you time to adjust and share updated copies with everyone.
For your wedding party and family, you can condense the timeline as they don’t need to know when each vendor is arriving.
What other information should be included in your final timeline?
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In the final timeline you share, it is helpful to also include these details:
Names and addresses for all locations (ceremony site, reception venue, any off-site picture locations).
Important Ceremony + Reception Song Selections (processional, recessional, grand entrance, cake cutting, first dances, etc)
Ceremony Processional Order (the order your family/wedding party walk in) and Grand Entrance order.
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In your final timeline you give to the venue and vendor team, be sure to include all vendor contact information and their arrival times.
Include the company name, day-of contact person and their phone number. **Note that with some companies, your day-of vendor may be different than the person you’ve been in contact with during the planning process — be sure to ask!
List all Vendor Arrival and/or Delivery Times, and their return time if the company comes back for teardown.
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If you do not have a wedding coordinator, it is helpful to include a detailed list (either within the timeline or a separate page) to share all setup details. This ensures whoever is responsible for your decor items knows where everything should go and exactly how you’d like it set up. Include details about your guestbook and gifts/cards table, centerpieces, signage, ceremony arbor, dessert table decor, etc.
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In the timeline you will share with your wedding party and VIPs, it is helpful to include details about any other wedding weekend activities.
If you are doing a rehearsal dinner, welcome party, post-wedding brunch, gift opening, etc. be sure to share the times and locations for these events.
Carly Mac Photography
Now that you’ve created your perfect wedding day timeline, who is going to execute it on the day of?
Enter: your wedding planner/coordinator! We are experts at timeline management and keeping your day flowing smoothly. Hiring a professional wedding coordinator is the best way to ensure a stress-free wedding day, but we understand it’s not in everyone’s budget.
If you won’t have a coordinator, you’ll need to designate someone to direct the wedding party where to be and when, and to keep the vendor team in sync throughout the event. Whoever you designate to help manage your day, be sure they take this role seriously; they need to respectfully communicate with vendors and act in a professional capacity throughout the night (ie; they shouldn’t be a bridesmaid or a guest, and they shouldn’t be drinking).
HappiLily Events is a Minnesota-based wedding planning company for couples who crave a thoughtfully designed and authentically-you event.
Ready to have the best wedding day? We need to work together.