Start Time to put on invite

I read an article that suggested to have an invite time 15 minutes before the ceremony start time.

As pp said you know your crowd better than any of us on WW.

As for me I will put on the card 4:00pm but it will actually start at 5:30pm. Otherwise we will not have a cocktail hour and probably a 3 hrs reception instead of 5.

However, I have 4 guest who are not Haitian I plan on calling them ahead of time to let them know the actual time.

If you ever have to deal with Haitians give them 2 extra hours.

I just officiated a beach wedding where, in between the flower girls and the bride & her dad, a late couple with their baby walked down the aisle! Don't be those guests! All eyes were on them, because everyone was expecting the bride. They should have let the bride & FOB get down the aisle and then slipped into seats at the back while all guests were looking to the front.

But, don't tell guests to be there at 3:30 if you have no intention of starting until 4:00.

I had a friend who has family that is chronically late to everything (according to her and her FH). She just put a little note that the ceremony begins promptly at 4 but that there would be light refreshments beginning at 3:30. The majority of her chronically late family arrived within that time frame and early-commers were rewarded with a mimosa I tend to be late frequently too to things (or walking up with only a few mins to spare) but the fact that there was an indication that people could arrive early for mingling made me feel like this was going to start right on time and that I needed to make sure I was early.

We put the actual start time on the invitations, because our crowd is a mix of always early and always late. Working on fitting in a 15 minute buffer in case there are more latecomers than expected.

I would say promptly at 4 and then you could always say something about them being able to show up starting at 3 or something

I struggled with this too. We put 4 and my original timeline had 415 as the actual start. But our officiant had another wedding right after, so he asked us to start promptly at 4. I think we started around 405 and if people were late, I certainly didn't notice.