5-hour wedding timeline

You can walk around & talk to your guests during dinner. Tell the caterer to make sure you & groom are served first, so you can eat quickly then make your rounds. It will go quick with 75 people! Our entire wedding is 6 hours, but we have a cocktail hour so we can take pictures. I assume family pictures won't take the full hour, if bride & groom portraits and wedding party pictures are already done. So you'll have time during the cocktail hour to mingle too!

Are you doing parent dances? I didn't see them on your schedule. If you are doing a first look and pictures before hand, then you don't need a full cocktail hour for family portraits. Also, you mentioned family portraits not being able to be done before hand due to your guest list. I am just curious as to why? I only ask, because generally family portraits are with parents, grandparents, and siblings only. Therefore, you'd be able to do them before hand. However, if you don't want to for whatever reason, I'd suggest shortening your cocktail hour to 30 minutes because you won't need that much time for portraits. Also, it flows nice if you do your first dance right after the grand entrance: Grand entrance, first dance, and welcome speech (not 100% sure what a welcome speech is though, lol). In addition, my caterer told me that an issue with waiting so late to cut the cake is that you run the risk of having a lot of left overs. She said that some people leave before then and by that time not many people want to eat cake that late because they are too busy dancing and drinking, etc. Just sharing, because I never thought of that before. Therefore, to maximize time, your schedule could look more like:

5:00 invite time, 5:15 ceremony start time, 5:35 ceremony ends

5:40 to 6:10 cocktail time and family portraits

6:15 move guests to reception space

6:20 grand entrance, first dance, and welcome speech.

6:30 Dinner is served

7:00 Toasts & Speeches

7:15 start dancing/mingling

8:00 Cut the cake

8:10 more dancing/mingling

9:50 last dance

10:00 Event ends

Hope that helps some

Hey Aria! I like the changes that Danielle made to your timeline! I think 5 hours will be plenty of time to enjoy it all! I do agree that I would move the cake cutting back so that guests can enjoy it and then end the night dancing!

Good idea! You're right, family photos probably won't take an hour since it's just immediate family. I forgot we already have couples/bridal party photos out of the way! Thank you!

Thank you so much! Your timeline makes a lot more sense. It's so kind of you to have broken it down!

I didn't want to do family photos beforehand because we only have 2 hours prior to event start time, and I wanted to get our first look & couples photos out of the way and still have time to hide away before guests arrive. Haha! I think I'll definitely do just 30 mins for cocktails though!

We're undecided on parent dances but I'm definitely going to cut the cake earlier per your suggestion. i realized moving the program up will let us save on photography & videographer as well.

You offered some fantastic suggestions! Thank you!

I'd just think about the potential that you (and your guests?) might feel pretty rushed, and even the revised schedule doesn't leave you much "wiggle room" (you only have 30 minutes for family photos and cocktail [half] hour..., 30 minutes for dinner, etc.). Also, I don't know where you are located, and what time sunset is predicted for your date, but you may want to take into account what the natural light is going to be at key times. (You can Google what time sunset will be at a certain location on a particular date. This is also something good to talk with your photographer about.) A wedding ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception in 5 hours is going to be pretty tight. Daughter's wedding, was about 6 hrs & 45 minutes, with 100 guests. We never really felt rushed, but it didn't seem too long. If you can afford it, I'd consider adding an hour at the beginning of your timeline and expanding cocktail hour to a full hour and building in a little bit of a time cushion into the hour now made up of entrance/dinner/toasts -- that's a LOT to do in 55 minutes. Good luck!

You're welcome...now if I could get my timeline done, haha. Also, if you do decide to do parent dances, I'd just mix them in with the 7:15 - 8:00 dance/mingle time. Just from previous experience, I've noticed guests tend to get "bored" (for lack of a better word) if you try to do all of the dances at one time.

Hi Aria,

I know this was posted a while ago but what did you decide to do? I am in the same situation and dont know if I should extend my 5 hour to 6... Do you end up getting the extra hour? If not did you feel like 5 hours was enough time? I appreciate your feedback!