late arriving guests

If you know they're going to be late, do it. I think interrupting the ceremony is really, really awful. But good luck with them paying attention to it.

On their invite, white out the arrival time, and replace it with a half hour earlier, i bet you they'll be on time! (o:

Anyone who knows me knows that I have no tolerance for this at all ( I wrote a little piece for the NY Times about this a couple of years ago, lol...). Invite everyone for a half hour earlier and serve lemonade or ice tea for a little bit first. Then start with whoever is there and wrangle two of your ushers or persuasive guests to keep latecomers in the far back of the room.

You can also enlist your family to let them know, via word of mouth, that if they are late, they are simply going to miss the ceremony. I'm sure there are things that they have had to get to on time (like planes, court dates....) and they've somehow made it. If your wedding isn't important enough for them to build in the time to circumvent traffic, get lost and get parked, well then, it's not important enough to make you wait. Those last 10 minutes feels like an eternity.

Thanks for the support and ideas!

I'm with Celia. Early invites works.

I like the sign idea alot...thats one thing that would really make me mad..I understand things happen and I am open to the possibility of things will probably go wrong on our day,but people that are late will just have to wait outside the church.Fh and i were almost late for his sisters wedding..totally his fault.I am early for everything and he is late for everything..i kept telling him we needed to leave and he thinks i over react by wanting to leave so early..well he never has gas so of course we had to go to the gas station, then we hit traffic..i was on the verge of knocking him out..lol..luckily we just barely made with NO time to spare but seriously i wanted to shake some sense into him that day.

We have about 30 minutes of pre-ceremony ceremonies before the official ceremony, so that's our first line of defense against latecomers.

The last line is that it's outdoors. If they're insanely late, they can watch from the back. Luckily, the most important people are all involved in the pre-ceremonies.

What type of "pre ceremony" ceremonies are you doing? Curious...

@heather, same here I'm always early FH always late.

@lori, I'm nervous about that as well.. sooooo many people I know are always late for things.. sighhhh

My DH's family is also notorious for being late. Before our wedding I told everyone of them if they were not on time the doors of the church would be locked and our ushers would not let them in. Well everyone made it, including DH's cousin who apparently got in at the last minute.