Ceremony Time on Invitations

I would tell people the actual time. Many people will show up 30-45 minutes prior to the stated start time regardless. If you plan to start 30 minutes late, those people will be there waiting an hour plus.

I have 3:30 on my invites. I plan to start bo later than 3:40.

It is considered extremely rude to put a time on your invitations that is not the actual start time of the ceremony! If people arrive late, have someone stationed by the doors of the ceremony venue and direct them to the seats at the back of the venue at an appropriate time.

You should put the actual time. I would show up between 3 and 3:15 for a 3:30 ceremony and would be extremely annoyed if I had to sit there for an hour because you were dishonest on the invitations. Assuming your guests are mostly adults, they know to arrive early or on time.

I'm putting the actual time. I wouldn't wait to start the wedding no later than 5 min after that. If people are late, that's on them. They've had the time for weeks, if not months, so if they are late that's on them. My family and my fh family are notorious for being late, but I have to stick to a schedule.

I am learning that it is rather common practice to put an earlier time on the invitation – never knew that before now! I would say not to put it any earlier than 15 minutes though, because most people will show up 10 to 15 minutes before the time printed on the invitation, and you don’t want people waiting 30+ minutes. We are having our ceremony at sunset, so it is hard to put an exact time on that. According to forecasts, it should be at 5:12pm. So we put “Gather at 5:00 PM. Ceremony to begin at sunset.” That way people are aware they need to be there at 5 and will be waiting a little bit for the ceremony to start. We will be having a string quartet start playing at 4:45 so guests are not waiting bored in silence. I think if you were having people arrive early and wait for the ceremony to start, you should make sure the DJ, quartet, etc. provides music during this time. I have even seen people open their bar for a mini cocktail hour prior to the wedding so guests are entertained while they wait, when a 30 min “buffer time” was printed on the invites. I think the most important thing is to not be rude to your guests. If you are going to have them arrive early, I would make sure they are entertained in some way during their wait time.

We told people the actual start time. People will show up early to get a good seat.

You should write down the time you want the ceremony to start, but expect that the ceremony won't start exactly on time, because it rarely does with weddings.

Our ceremony start time is 4pm and the plan is to start at 4pm but my venue coordinator said realistically that means we will start around 4:15pm by the time everyone is seated and in position. Our timeline is arranged accordingly. I definitely would not buffer more than 15 minutes because guests usually show up early for weddings and if you give them too much time they'll be waiting around for a while before the ceremony begins.

View Quoted Comment Okay, thank you so much! Both of our families are rarely on time to anything. This is super helpful!

View Quoted Comment Okay, thank you so much! We're having a really chill backyard wedding and I feel like I don't know enough about weddings to organize this entire thing by myself lol. Wedding Wire has been my best friend.

View Quoted Comment Same here! No one (in either of our families) is ever on time to anything. This makes me feel so much better, thank you!

View Quoted Comment Our guests are mostly adults, but neither of our families are ever on time to anything. This is a good point though, and exactly why I was hesitant to write an earlier time on the invitations. Thank you

Tell people the actual time. They're adults and should be able to schedule their own time. LOL

View Quoted Comment Should is the key word. Our families are late to everything 😂

You should put the actual time, people know to show up prior to that. We went to a wedding that said 3:30 PM ceremony time, so we showed up at 3:15, and the wedding didn't start until 4. I thought it was super rude.

We're going with the true time, if they're late, that's on them. I'm starting on time.

We put the actual time, but in parentheses wrote please be seated 30 minutes prior.
So our wedding started at 12 p.m and wrote under that ( please be seated by 11:30) so people knew the actual start time, but were advised to be seated by 11:30.

I was initially considering putting a time that was 10-15 minutes before the start. However, we decided against that and are going to put the actual start of the ceremony which is 6 PM. If 6 PM is approaching and there are still a lot of guests that are not there yet, we may delay it a bit further but if it's only a few guests not seated yet, then we'll go ahead and start the ceremony. Our list is comprised of mostly adults and they should know how to arrive to a wedding on time. If they don't, unfortunately that's not on us.

I already ordered my invited and the ceremony is 330. I wrote 3pm. We have alot of out of town guests and they are always extremely late