Was your ceremony on time?

We haven’t had our wedding yet, but I have been a guest to close to 50 weddings, and the start times have varied a lot. I will say a majority of them started on time, or within 5 to 10 minutes. There have been some that were over 30 minutes late, and one that started an entire hour late! And, to add insult to injury, the wedding that started over an hour late also took an hour and a half for photos after the ceremony, and did not provide adequate hors d’oeuvres during cocktail hour. Needless to say, a lot of people left before the couple even arrived to the ceremony because they were hungry and angry.

My mom attended a wedding last week. The invitation stated ceremony started at 5:00 (however bride all along scheduled ceremony for 5:30 but just wanted to be sure guests arrived early). On top of coming around 4:45 and having to sit 45 min, it was an outdoor wedding on a 98 degree day (no fans, shade, etc.). It was followed by cocktail hour of cheese/fruit and wine and dinner wasn't served until 7:30. Brides, please do not put start time earlier than when you want ceremony to begin. It's unfair to your guests and most ceremonies do not start right on the dot anyway.

Mine did, maybe 5 minutes late but nothing major. We had a lot of guests who have a habit of being chronically late, so we made it very clear to them that we would start on time. Unfortunately some of them still didn't listen and were trying to find a seat as we were walking down the aisle, but we tried 🤷🏼‍♀️

We started on time- it was really important to me to maximize the time of our reception so we had ample socializing time with our guests. Most weddings I've attended have started with 10 minutes of the invite time, but my husband was in a wedding once where the bride was about an hour late even though she got ready on the property. Sitting outside for over an hour in the sun wasn't fun at all.

Our wedding was an outdoor wedding at my parents home and despite our starting being displayed on the invitation, we started 45 minutes late largely due to glam squad being late. Guests reported that they were more than happy with the time adjustment, given the pre-cocktail hour ( prior to ceremony) and appetizers It also gave other guests time to arrive on time and socialize. Which they valued because man had not seen one another in a while due to Covid. We immediately followed the ceremony which was 20 minutes with cocktail hour and more appetizers.

We started within a few minutes of our stated start time. On our website, we requested our guests to be seated by 1:45pm, as we will be walking down the aisle by 2pm. We specifically added this so there wouldn't be ambiguity. My husband may be known to be tardy to his friends, but not me so we just made it known. I would have loved some pre-ceremony refreshments like Sloan, but I got married in a Church.

I think ours started maybe like 5 minutes after just to accommodate for people still coming in or who just came in

Our ceremony is at 6pm and I am a stickler about being on time. I’ve already informed our event coordinator that we will start on time regardless.


I attended my sisters wedding and she was late! But she’s late for everything. Also, the wedding I was in last year started about 30-45 mins late.

Nope. Our ceremony was supposed to start at 6:00pm. Started at 7:00pm.

I won't go into the details, but suffice to say my husband got stuck in gridlock traffic on the way to the wedding. Our caterer opened up refreshments early, and our ceremony pianist improvised and began playing to fill the void.

I don't recall a single wedding, either as a guest, wedding party attendant, or vendor where it was actually on time. All have started at least 10 minutes late. I would say anything up to 15 minutes is a "reasonable" lateness. 20 minutes is starting to push it, but any annoyance will be alleviated once the wedding starts. 30 is when couples should look into their vendors making guests more comfortable by offering refreshments at a minimum.

Just had my wedding on Saturday! Our first shuttle arrived 4:30 pm, 2nd shuttle arrived 4:45. We had strong trio playing beginning at 4:30, with water station available. Ceremony scheduled to start at 5 and my wedding party started walking at 5:05 pm, right on time!