To not have a clue how the timings of a wedding day work? Help!

[leavetheteabagin]

I haven’t been to a wedding since I was about 4 and I have no clue what the timings should be.

We are getting married in a church and then planning on going on to a restaurant for the reception - they are a 20 minute drive apart. Is that too long? I literally have no clue!

If we wanted the ceremony to be in the afternoon at 2ish, when should the reception be booked to start? We are planning on having the same guests there all day but if we do end up having some evening guests, what time do they normally arrive?

I would love for you to share your wedding day timetable with me! Thank you so much for helping a very clueless bride I truly appreciate it!

2:30 church
3:30 photos and drinks
5pm dinner and speeches
7:30 evening

It worked really well for us. There was very little hanging around.
I hope you have a fantastic day ❤️

My wedding was small and overseas so not really relevant. From weddings I have been to, the photographs between the ceremony and the reception can take a couple of hours, it is quite a boring time for guests.

Ours was all on the same site (civil ceremony) so no travelling required.

Marriage at 2.

Drinks on the lawn at 2.45.

Meal at 4.30, followed by speeches.

Evening reception officially started at 7, but I think we were done with the speeches by 6.30; it was a beautiful day so everyone spilled outside and had drinks on the lawn.

Band played two sets at 7.30 and 9.30.

Cornish pasties at 9ish.

Carriages at midnight, apart from the wedding party who stayed on site. I think I went to bed at around 2!

How many guests are you having? That makes a huge difference.

Church wedding I would allow about an hour, then photos and mingling after for another hour, depending on the number of guests. You and the groom are supposed to leave for the reception first and the guests follow, so I would allow at least 40 mins to an hour for everyone to reassemble.

If you have a recieving line, where you and the bridal party shake everyone's hands and greet them on the way in to the reception room, this will take a little time depending on your numbers.

I'd plan for food to be served about 6 tbh.

3pm ceremony, in the same place as the reception.
An hour or so of faffing with photos, etc, while everyone had some drinks and mingled.
Dinner at 5, evening guests at 8.
You might find that things take much longer than you expect so don't plan timings too tightly. I'd say dinner at half 4 or 5 would be about right, to allow for photos and guests to get to the restaurant, park, freshen up, get drinks and chat, etc, before sitting down for a formal meal.

My first thought is what sort of reception are you having? Is it a big restaurant, can you stay there all day? Is there outside space for photos? If it’s just one small room people probably won’t want to be there all afternoon and evening.

Are you putting on transport for your guests between the church and the reception or is it easily accessible by public transport?

Ceremony is at 2pm, how long is it? You’ll want half an hour or so after the ceremony for people to mingle/photos at the church, or longer if these will be your main photos. Then an hour for people to get to the reception (people never go directly there/there may be transport issues).

Think about when your guests can eat - 2pm ceremony is awkward if people have to travel, less so if all local.

And it should not take two hours to take photos which you will only look at once . If you want the farty 'looking into our future in a wood/on a beach' do them another time. Get the photos with all the guests done and then go feed them.

We had an ''all in one'' venue in a big country pile.

Guests arrived for champagne in the great hall ( love it) at 11.00
Wedding at 11.30 in the chapel
Photos (and wandering about having a nose) in the grounds 12 till 1.00
Buffet lunch served in one of the reception rooms at 1.00
Cake cutting, more champagne and speeches at 2.00
Coffee at 3
Everyone out at 4.00
Me and DH upstairs to 4 poster honeymoon suite for the rest of the day and night
Flew to Italy next morning.

All the guests were back to their own homes with their feet up by 5/5.30 and they all said they loved their day and it was a nice change from the norm :)

I would have a maximum of an hour between ceremony ending and food being served. It is a long and tedious wait for guests otherwise. For that hour make sure there are drinks and something small to snack on, plenty of seating and that where the guests are waiting is weather appropriate. I have been stuck outside in strong sunshine for two hours before with no shade and little seating and also stuck outside in the freezing cold for two hours. I remember both those weddings for the wrong reasons!

Unless very local to all guests then 2pm is a bad time as they won’t have eaten. The ceremony doesn’t last long so food at 5pm is too far apart. There’s nothing worse as a guest than sitting/standing around for hours as the bride is fussing over photos.

If twenty minutes away, people will most likely drive so may not be able to join in your toast etc if alcoholic.

Given numbers for weddings this year are highly unlikely to go above 30 I wouldn’t be having any evening only guests and just include all. An evening only invite for a lot of people feels second rate, not good enough to see the actual wedding but good enough to make up numbers to fill a venue and bring a gift.

As a guest, the period between the ceremony and the meal, where the photos are done feels like hours especially if they haven't told you what time the meal is planned for, so whatever time you plan the meal for, maybe put it on the invitation, or let them know by some other means, because people are likely to see that, if the ceremony is at 2, they might be fed at 3-3.30 so have little or no lunch, but in reality, they need to eat before the ceremony as it's probably going to be more like 5 pm when the meal is served.

We had almost those exact timings laiste and it was perfect. Headed straight to the hotel spa afterwards then room service and just relaxing together :)

Same timings as Cric except we had the ceremony in the same place as the reception and we had drinks and canapes while we went off for photos.
The weather was lovely on the day so everyone was happy to lounge around outside the venue with a beer or prosecco while we tarted about in the lanes!

Ours was specifically designed not to have people hanging around pointlessly.

We had our reception at home and it was a buffet. The caterers came in and did their stuff during the ceremony. The guests were offered drinks as they arrived back and the food was made available about half an hour later. We had the bare minimum of formal pictures and they were done during the reception.

The main thing to remember is that it’s rude and unnecessary to keep guests hanging about.

We had 2pm church wedding (a lot of people went to the local pubs for lunch first). Reception 20 mins away so people started arriving there at 3:15 (we had a few more photos taken at the church). Substantial canapés and open bar until 5:30. Speeches at 6, meal at 6:30. Evening guests from 7:45. Dessert buffet, plus cheese and biscuits, for all guests, available all evening. Finish at 11:30.

(I personally like the bit between ceremony and meal as long as there are drinks and something to nibble on!)

Thank you so much everybody who has answered so far, it’s been really helpful!

We will be having 60 guests in April next year. There were only a handful of people on our ‘Evening’ list so we have decided to just have everybody for the whole day. The restaurant is a big weddingy-type place which we will have for the meal and the evening do.

We won’t be having a long photography session, we are both hideously shy and awkward

Is the general consensus that 2pm is an awkward time then? I didn’t want to go much earlier because I don’t want the day to feel like it is going on forever if you see what I mean.

Our church is in our local area (city outskirts) and then the restaurant is in the city centre. Most of our guests will be staying overnight (we live about an hour from majority of family and friends in our birth town) so I’d presumed everybody would just drive to the church, then drive into the city centre and drop their cars off at hotels etc before coming to the reception venue. Is this completely wrong? I’m sensing that it’s completely wrong!!!

The drinks and chatting is part of the day surely? It's not 'standing around waiting'. It's awkward if you don't know anyone to chat to, but most of the time you know some other people at a wedding.

We had wedding and reception in the same place but timings were:

4.30pm ceremony
5.30 - 6.30 drinks reception while we had photos taken (mostly in the venue itself as it's gorgeous)
6.30 food (taco truck, pizza truck, and ice cream man)
Then drinks and dancing til midnight ish.

We really wanted it to be relaxed and informal, more like a house party with a wedding ceremony at the beginning, so no day/evening sections. It worked really well for us, but we didn't do speeches etc like some weddings so it wasn't a typical set up at all!

@sunflowertulip Those timings sound very much like they could work for us. We are having lots of canapés too so hopefully that satisfies hunger for an hour or two? Did you find your guests were okay in the time between arriving at the reception venue and having the meal served?

Thank you so much everyone, this is so helpful.

Also very tempted by the idea of shooting off early Me and DP are painfully awkward and would probably be having a smaller wedding if we didn’t have such large families! We are hoping for something relatively informal too @therocinante - so hopefully we feel a bit less tense!

@OwlinaTree

The drinks and chatting is part of the day surely? It's not 'standing around waiting'. It's awkward if you don't know anyone to chat to, but most of the time you know some other people at a wedding.

The last wedding I went to had a gap of three hours between the end of the ceremony and the start of the reception without as much as a cup of tea on offer. Trust me, that was tedious. Some of the guests went to the supermarket for sandwiches!

I'd say 2 pm is fine, as long as people know the timings and whether canapes will be served in between.

The awkwardness is not knowing when the meal is going to be so you don't have much lunch because you don't realise it's going to be as late as 5 pm but then you're absolutely starving between 3 and 4 pm when there's a lot of hanging around with not much happening.

Very uncomfortable when you're hungry and no sign of being asked to sit down for a meal and some people have medical conditions that make this quite dangerous for them, eg diabetes.

Or the canapes arrive but you don't want to eat too many because you're going to be served a proper meal at some point.

As to what people will do with cars and hotels will depend. Many city centre hotels don't have car parking or charge a lot for it, so people might make other arrangements.

I think the set up with church and reception sounds perfect, people will perhaps take a little longer to get to the reception from the church but then will be up for drinking and dancing all night!

I'd go with 2pm service, then allow an hour for this plus another hourish for photos. So you would leave the church about 4 and go straight to the reception. Your guests might need longer than the 20 mins if they are driving to hotels and dropping off cars etc, so you will probably all regroup around 5. Food served at 6, done by 8, then they can set up for the evening bit, you should get a good few hours of dancing!

We wrote on the invitations the approximate time of food (I think it was about 5ish) and earned people to eat beforehand. You could do similar. I would think people would have lunch before a 2pm wedding, I would have a quick sandwich in the car!

2pm is a fine time. People just eat an earlier lunch/brunch. Surely people aren’t so stuck in their ways that they can’t adjust a meal time for one day