Timeline for evening wedding

Your photographer and DOC will help set up a timeline. My DOC and Photographer collaborated to set up my timeline and it was perfect. After cocktail hour, WP was introducedd, then me and H where we went straight into our first dance. After that we had dinner, a few toasts and parent dances then opened up the dance floor.

If your ceremony is at 7pm, I would probably arrive no later then 5:30 if your venue has a place for you. You always have those guest who arrive extremely early (and I mean like a hour) so if you care if they see you or not, then you will want to be there before them. I do not have a DOC so I made my own timeline. We are having our guest go in and start being served dinner directly after the ceremony (our venue is serving us intimately alone right after the ceremony so we know we get to eat while our guest mingle and eat), then we will do introductions, first dances, and then start the celebration.

If you are not introducing your wedding party, I would just go ahead a knock out your first dance before serving dinner. You could wait to do the father/daughter and mother son/dance after dinner.

7 is kind of a late ceremony, not sure if you're set on that time but I would recommend between 4-6 if you're planning to do a cocktail hour before dinner. If you're skipping cocktail hour it's no biggie. Anyways here is a standard timeline:

7:00 Ceremony

7:30 Cocktail hour (can be longer or shorter)

8:20 Transition guests to reception area

8:30 Entrances

8:35 first dance

8:40 Dinner (ask caterer how long they will need)

9:40 Speeches

9:50 Father/Daughter Mother/Son dances (I recommend to edit songs down to 3 minutes or less but that's up to you)

10:00 Dancing!

10:30 Cake cutting

11:40 last call (check with venue to see what their policy is)

12:00 Event Over