14 Questions when Creating your Wedding Day Timeline
After your marriage license, your wedding timeline is your wedding’s most important document! It helps organize all the moving parts, guiding you, your wedding party, your family, and your vendors through practically every moment of the day. The timeline is vital for making sure the everything runs smoothly and keeping stress to a minimum.
While creating your own timeline can be challenging, many items will start to fall into place after making some of the big decisions. Here are 14 questions to ask yourself and items to consider when structuring your wedding timeline:
1. When will your Ceremony Begin?
Your wedding day revolves around when you are actually getting married, of course! Are you thinking about a cheery brunch? Afternoon picnic? Evening soiree? All of these options play into the feel of your your wedding. Determining the general time is the biggest piece of the puzzle, and then other decisions can help you zero in on the exact ceremony time.
2. Traditional or First Look?
This decision plays a huge part in your timeline. The tradition is that on the day of the wedding, the couple should not see each other until their marriage ceremony begins. The alternative is what we call the “First Look,” a special moment when the couple sees each other before the ceremony. It doesn't replace the walking-down-the-aisle photo, but actually is an additional wonderful moment! The First Look allows for taking most the formal photos prior to the ceremony, avoiding the typical photo rush between the ceremony and the reception.
3. How Much Time do you Need to get Ready?
Whether you’re getting your hair and makeup done by a professional or are confident in doing it yourself, the time allotted for getting ready is not something to cut short! Plan on two or three hours minimum, though a few additional items may dictate that you need to start even sooner:
A hair and makeup run-through prior to your wedding day is very helpful in determining how much time you need and makes things more smoothly the day-of. This eliminates the decision making and inevitable adjustments that come into play when you’re getting ready for the biggest day in your relationship.
How many bridesmaids? This will help you figure out how much time will be needed for everyone to get ready, get dressed, as well as allow for fun moments such as a champagne toast, silly snuggles with silken matching robes sitting on the bed, or fun moments such as a bridesmaid first-look when your girls see you ready for the first time as well.
Are you going to a salon, or getting ready somewhere other than your ceremony venue? Double the transportation time you anticipate! Or, is a stylist coming to where you are getting ready? Plan to have a little bit of overlap with the arrival time of your photographer so that they can sneak in some candid preparation photos, but ultimately you’ll want your beauty team wrapped up ad out of the room once the main photos get underway.
4. How Long will your Ceremony Be?
When it comes down to it, getting married is the whole point of your wedding day! Religious ceremonies can last an hour or more. As far as secular ceremonies, some couples opt for short and sweet, while others add in proceedings such as readings or unity ceremonies. Think about which pieces of a ceremony are important to you and your fiancé to determine how long it will last. Don’t forget to include the time needed for the processional and recessional!
The thing to not forget, though, is that your entire ceremony time slot on your wedding day is more than just the vows and ring exchange. You have to allow for the time to line up everyone before they walk down the aisle, the officiant to get into position, the music to start, the processional to meander toward the altar, your family member walking you down the aisle to give you a little hug of encouragement once you make it up to your fiance, a few moments for introductory words, perhaps there’s a reading, a song, a story, or a tradition such as a “sand ceremony,” or “tying the knot”, and then afterward allowing for time in which your friends and family members will want to come over and congratulate you. All of those things do not individually take much time, but they do add up, and can turn what would have otherwise been a “quick 10 minute exchange” into a full 30 or 45 minute block of time. Don’t overlook the little moments!
5. What Time does your Reception Venue Close?
If you’re doing an evening wedding, some venues have a set-in-stone ending time. Figure out how much time you want for your reception and work backwards to determine at what time the party should begin.
If you opt to do a reception exit, such as bubbles or sparklers, or if you want to set up a fun dance floor end-of-night photo with your entire group, plan enough time for that to end before the venue’s deadline.
6. Do you need to travel between your Ceremony and Reception venue?
If the two key parts of your wedding are at different places, build in ample time for not just the transportation between them, but the time to wrap up at one place, gather your belongings, walk to the car, trolley, or limo, load up, get seated and situated, allow for traffic or sitting behind a slow-moving tourist train or bicycle group, find parking at your arrival stop, scoot out, gather your things, and walk into the next place. Most people only search Google Maps for Address 1 and Address 2, they see that it’s 15 minutes of drive time, and they add 15 minutes to their timeline, completely missing those other key details. Like the ceremony timing mentioned above, this is somewhere that “15 minutes” might REALLY be more like 25 or 30.
7. How Big are your Wedding Party and Family?
The size and variety of these groups, as well as your desired shot list, helps determine how long this part of the timeline will last. A small part of this also involves how well everyone who is needed for group photos sticks close by. If your photographer is not having to wait for aunts and uncles to be retrieved from the cocktail hour and everyone is accounted for, the formal photos actually go pretty quickly - just two or three minutes per grouping. Knowing this, you can easily calculate that 10 total groupings will take about 20 to 30 minutes, and you can adjust up or down from there.
8. How can you Avoid Hungry Guests?
Weddings can be long affairs, especially if a cocktail hour follows your ceremony. Guests can get surprisingly voracious, so try not to make them wait too long before the meal, or plan on providing them with appetizers or snacks.
If you’re opting for a buffet over a plated meal, it may take longer than you’d think for each table to go through the line to get their food. If possible, have guests go on both sides of the buffet table to double the pace!
9. Which Wedding Reception Traditions are you Doing?
There are so many options for the festivities on your wedding day! By no means do you have do all of these traditions; the ones you do opt for is entirely up to you:
Wedding party reception entrance
First dance
Father-Daughter and Mother-Son dances
Toasts
Cake cutting
Bouquet toss
Garter toss
10. How can you Best Manage the Crowd?
Whichever of the above wedding festivities you choose, plan adequate time for them. There’s some time and strategy involved in “managing the crowd” and gathering your guests for a particular event. Structure a flow that minimizes the number of times they drift apart and must come back together. The larger your wedding is, the longer it takes to round up everyone, unless they’re already in the same place after an event such as the first dance.
11. Can you Stagger the Toasts?
Encourage your speakers to aim for short and sweet toasts about two or three minutes long. They will probably appreciate the lower pressure! Plus, long speeches delay the party and can be costly considering your wedding vendor team's hourly costs. Also, keep your reception's flow lively by breaking up toasts so your guests don’t have to listen to too many speeches in a row. For example, give the mic to the father of the bride before the meal and conclude it with toasts from your maid of honor and best man.
12. Would you like a FULL GUEST LIST Group Photo?
A group photo of everyone attending your wedding is a wonderful way to remember everyone who celebrated your special day with you. Again, plan enough time for this and keep the art of crowd management in mind. I usually recommend this at night when everyone has gathered on the dance floor!
13. Will you do a Receiving Line?
A receiving line is a good option if your wedding has 100 or more guests. It decreases the pressure on you to greet everyone but does take some time. As for timing, I recommend doing your formal wedding party and family photos, then joining your cocktail hour with a receiving line.
14. Would you like Sunset Photos?
Key West is known for its beautiful sunsets, and they are an especially breathtaking backdrop on your wedding day! We highly recommend not passing up this opportunity. Whether you choose a traditional or First Look timeline, consider planning a quick getaway to capture some photos of you two and the sunset. Keep in mind that depending on the time of year, it can be as early as 5:38 pm in the winter or as late as 8:20 pm in the summer.
