Wedding day timeline

If you are looking for a baseline, you can take your ceremony start time and work backwards from there. Be sure to include travel time! There are a lot of base templates online, and some customizable ones you can use as a starting point.

There is an absolutely lovely post on TikTok from Meredith with Plus One Planning on creating a custom wedding timeline. I included a base line below based on it, but I highly, highly recommend watching her video because it's so full of amazing examples and considerations. She makes incredible overall content as well, and it has helped me so much in planning my and my Sister in Law's wedding!

1. Start with the things you cannot change (what time the venue opens/what time your venue access begins, what time your ceremony begins [5:30p.m.] sunset time (photos), last call, conclusion (with enough time to clean up) and venue closing).

2. Write out how many hours you have your vendors for and dead time (traveling time between ceremony & reception, travel time to photo spots).

3. Block it out in 3 portions: Getting ready (goes all the way to ceremony line up), Ceremony (Start of Ceremony through cocktail hour after dinner/cake), Reception. (Make sure to include room flip time between ceremony & reception if necessary).

4. With this base, build your timeline. This will be completely dependent on your wedding wants & needs. For example, if you are doing a first look, you can take most pictures at the beginning of the day, if not you need to make time after the ceremony.

5. Once you write out everything you want to do within a block (Ready, Ceremony, Reception) you can start timing things. She recommends working backwards from the end of the block. For example, if the ceremony starts at 5:30 you'll want to be ready for the lineup around 5;15, then you charge an hour to photos, so they must start at 4:15, etc; Once you figure out what time your Hair and Makeup needs to be done by, consult your stylist and ask what time you have to start!

6. Repeat this in each block.

Congratulations and good luck on your special day!

We actually got a lot of help with our vendors on creating our timeline. Our photographer was able to tell us when pictures needed to be based on what our plan for photos were. We wanted a first look and I wanted a first look with my dad. Once our photographer told us when things needed to be I spoke with our hairstylist/makeup artist to create a timeline so I knew and the bridesmaids knew where they needed to be and when. Our venue coordinator set the times for ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception so I didn't have to worry about any of that. I'd talk to your vendors to see if they can assist.