Ceremony time

Put the time that the ceremony is going to start. Tell your family via word of mouth that if they are late, they will not be able to enter until after the ceremony. Putting a false time isn't fair to your guests who are on time. If your invitation said 4 pm, I would arrive around 3:45 pm. If the ceremony didn't start until 5 pm, I would be extremely annoyed. If worst comes to worst and you notice that many of your guests aren't there at the start of the ceremony, you can delay for 5-10 minutes.

View Quoted Comment I completely understand your point. My ceremony starts at 3:00pm, I was thinking of putting 2:30 just to give them time to arrive on time, I spoke with my priest and he think it would be good to put in the invites 2:30 so a good amount of people do arrive on time, who ever still manage to be late than those won’t be allow in. I’m telling you my family have the tendency to arrive late to everything. I know that day will be crazy! but I am trying for that day to go smooth, after ceremony we have to take pictures and than cocktail hour starts at 6:00pm I am trying to enjoy every dime we spent on this wedding, but you right I will call them and demand they arrive on time lol

Have someone reliable from your family pick up the ones most prone to being late

View Quoted Comment Yes I will try my best to see who in the family can help with that.

I was thinking of doing the same thing and luckily I didnt. My venue required the exact time my ceremony was going to start to be on my invitations. It was in my contract. I just told everyone that I figured would be a time issue that if they didnt get there by 5:30 they wouldn't miss the ceremony as they wouldnt be let in 🤷‍♀️

View Quoted Comment Oh okay, yes our venue contract shows that cocktail must start at 6 but the church where we getting married at is my concern they made it clear they will start at 3:00pm sharp and for us to let our guest know they have to be there earlier

View Quoted Comment If they gave you the go ahead to tell people to be there earlier I would do it. Haha if it wasn't in my contract I would of put 5pm instead of 5:30 lol

Put down the start time of the ceremony, but request guests arrive prior to the ceremony. Or you could say something like “ceremony starts at 11am, doors will be shut at 10:50 so please plan your arrival accordingly”.

On mines I put 39 minutes early lol

View Quoted Comment 😂 You are not playing games with your guest lol. I want to do the same but I will confirm 100 percent with my church and ask for there opinion again

View Quoted Comment Agree, i am hiring a day coordinator maybe she can help with that

View Quoted Comment Totally lol I will confirm with my church again to see if that information that was given to us was accurate if so, I will do 30 min early

View Quoted Comment I agree. But maybe add “doors open at ___ and will close at ___l

I chose an odd start-time for our ceremony just for that reason. I am putting 5pm on invitations, but ceremony will start at 5:15. I had never thought of doing that before, but after hearing soooooo many horror stories about guests showing up late & disrupting the ceremony, I decided it was a good idea.

This is such a good point and I didn’t even think of it!! I’m definitely going to look into asking my venue what they think I should do.