Wedding day timeline, hour by hour, and how to build yours

Most wedding day timelines online are someone else's day: a 5 pm ceremony in June, in a place where the sun sets at 8:30. Copy it for a ceremony in December and your portraits happen in the dark. The fix is not a better template. It is starting from the times that are fixed for your date and place, and filling in the rest with honest durations.

Step 1: Write down the times you cannot move

Before you place a single moment, collect these:

• Sunset on your date, at your venue. It decides when outdoor portraits can happen, and it moves more than you might think. In Nashville, sunset is at 8:07 pm on 19 June 2027, 6:50 pm on 18 September and 4:33 pm on 11 December: three and a half hours apart in the same city. Look up your own date with the US Naval Observatory's sun calculator.
• When the venue opens to you and when you must be out. Some venues only let you in two hours before the ceremony, which decides where you get ready.
• Your photographer's hours. Coverage is usually sold in blocks, so the hours you booked set the window for everything that should be photographed.
• Any hard start from someone else, such as a church with another service or an officiant with a second wedding.

Step 2: Use honest durations

Guesses are where timelines fail. These are the allowances one working photographer and one hair and makeup studio publish for their own clients:

Two of these are worth checking against your own plans. Family portraits grow with every group you add, so count your groups before you give them a slot. And hair and makeup grows with every person: four people having both hair and makeup is eight services, or six hours for one artist and three hours for two.

Step 3: Add the 30-5 rule

The 30-5 rule is the buffer that keeps a day on time. Allow 30 minutes around the big fixed moments: be finished with photos and out of sight 30 minutes before the ceremony, when guests start to arrive. Then allow 5 minutes for every move between places, even across the same building: from the portrait spot to the ceremony, from the ceremony to family photos, from the lawn back to the reception. Five minutes feels generous on a normal day. At a wedding, with a dress, a bouquet and forty people who want a hug, it is not.

Step 4: Decide on a first look with arithmetic

The first look is not only a sentimental choice. It moves photos from after the ceremony to before it, and whether you need that is a sum.

Without a first look, everything is photographed after the ceremony: family portraits (30 to 45 minutes), the wedding party (20), the two of you (30), and three moves at 5 minutes each. That is 95 to 110 minutes of photos, against a cocktail hour of 60. Guests wait, or the portraits get rushed, or you miss the cocktail hour you paid for.

With a first look, the couple and wedding party portraits happen before the ceremony. After it, only family portraits remain: 35 to 50 minutes, which fits inside the cocktail hour, and you join your guests for the end of it.

So the rule is:

• If the photos after the ceremony add up to more than your cocktail hour, plan a first look, or lengthen the cocktail hour, or cut family groups.
• If sunset comes before your ceremony ends, as it often does in winter, portraits have to happen before the ceremony. A first look is the only way to have them in daylight.
• If seeing each other first at the aisle matters more to you than the cocktail hour, skip the first look and take the longer gap knowingly. That is a fine choice as long as it is a choice.

A worked example: Saturday 18 September 2027

A wedding in Nashville for 110 guests, with the ceremony and reception at the same venue. The venue must be empty by 11 pm. Sunset is at 6:50 pm. The photographer is booked for eight hours. The couple chose a first look.

Working back from sunset: 30 minutes of ceremony, an hour of cocktails, 5 minutes for the entrance and the shortest dinner allowance, 30 minutes, put sunset portraits at the end of dinner. That is 2 hours 5 minutes plus 25 minutes of portraits, which is where the 2 hours 30 minutes in the short answer comes from, and it puts the ceremony at 4:20 pm. If you want the longer 45-minute dinner before you step out, start 15 minutes earlier.

Two things this example shows. First, the day starts at 8 am for an 11 pm finish: fifteen hours for the people who start earliest, which is why the morning needs food and water on the plan, not just appointments. Second, eight hours of photography from 1:30 pm ends at 9:30 pm, so the send-off is not photographed. If you want it, either book about nine and a half hours or stage a short send-off at 9:15 pm with the guests still there.

Now move the same wedding to 11 December. Sunset is at 4:33 pm, so the same rule puts the ceremony at about 2 pm. If you would rather keep an evening ceremony, the first look and all portraits move before it, in daylight, and the sunset portraits disappear from the plan.

The order of a wedding day

If you are starting from nothing, the usual order is: getting ready, first look and portraits if you choose them, the ceremony, family portraits during the cocktail hour, the reception entrance, dinner, speeches, the first dance, cake, dancing, and the send-off. Speeches can also go before dinner, which suits a hungry crowd less but a nervous speaker more. Change the order to suit your wedding; keep the durations honest.

Who owns the timeline

One of you should own the document and the other should check it. The owner keeps one version, updates it when a vendor changes a time, and sends it out about two weeks before the wedding, which is when our wedding planning checklist has you confirming vendor arrival details. The checker reads it for the moments only they know about: a grandparent who needs to sit early, a friend who is playing during the ceremony.

On the day, neither of you should be the one holding it. Give it to a point person, a planner, coordinator or trusted friend, who answers the questions so you do not have to. Our guide to planning a wedding together has more on dividing jobs like this one.

Share it with every vendor

Every vendor plans their day from your timeline: when to arrive, when to set up, when to serve. Send each of them the same version, with the venue address, the access time and the phone number of your point person. If you have vendor payments due on the day, put those on it too. Our guide to paying wedding vendors covers which balances usually fall then.

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Keeping it in one place

A timeline in a document works if one person edits it and everyone reads the latest copy. The trouble starts when the photographer has version three, the caterer has version five and your partner is looking at a screenshot.

In Yes, I Do, the day screen starts with the usual moments, from getting ready to the send-off, and you set a start and end time for each as it is decided, with a note for where, who and what to bring. It shows how many moments still need a time, and your partner sees the same day on their phone and can change it too.

Questions

Sources

• US Naval Observatory: sun and moon data for one day, for the Nashville sunset times on 19 June, 18 September and 11 December 2027.
• Mersadi Olson Photography: how to build the timeline of your wedding day, August 2024, for the first look, portrait, ceremony, family photo, dinner, first dance, cake, dancing and sunset portrait allowances.
• Zola: how to master your wedding day timeline, for the guests' part of the day lasting around six hours.
• Nyoka Gregory Beauty: how long does wedding hair and makeup take, for the time per service and the venues that only allow access two hours before.