Ceremony start time?!

Since the sun sets earlier in the fall/winter months, one of the main things you will want to take into consideration is whether you want your ceremony and photos to happen during daylight or after sunset. Check your weather app – it will tell you sunset times for every day of the year- and plan from there.

Do you have a reception venue booked? They typically have specific timeframes you can be there. Are you having the ceremony at the reception venue or elsewhere? If it’s elsewhere, there should not be any gap beyond driving time to the reception or you will lose guests. Asking your guests to entertain themselves for hours in between is poor hosting and can easily be avoided in all situations.


What is your specific vision? Do you picture a daytime ceremony, or evening? How long do you intend to have your wedding? Standard wedding venues have a 4 hour set block of time that includes cocktail hour, dinner and dancing. Which is a lot to pack into a very tight schedule. Non-wedding venues allow 8-24 hours so you can start anytime. Find out the earliest you can start at your venue and work your way backward.

In our families and social circles, a ceremony typically starts at 2-3pm and the reception immediately follows and lasts until 11pm/12am with no gaps. Even with the majority being Catholic. There have been a couple early evening weddings starting after dinner (7pm) but those were very short, just cake and coffee before heading home.

Plan your wedding day timeline so that your day flows smoothly, you don't want to have people waiting around for hours or awkward space gaps if it's not necessary. If your ceremony and reception are in the same venue, you'll want to have your reception (or some kind of cocktail hour) right after the ceremony. If your ceremony and reception venue are separate, make sure you leave enough time for people to move from one place to another.

I got married October 2 in Maine. I believe sunset was 6:20. We did ceremony from 3:30-4, a big group photo of everyone, cocktail hour from 4:15-5:15 and then the reception started at 5:20 (everything was on site). My husband and I snuck out of dinner for a few mins and took some really gorgeous sunset pics at around 6 I believe. We would have started later, but our venue had a hard 9 pm cutoff time and ultimately I think it worked out well!


My mom went to a wedding on November 13 where the timeline ended up being way off. Their ceremony started at 4:30, but sunset was 4:20 so even though they were overlooking the ocean, you couldn’t tell! So just be mindful of sunset.