Having a wedding day timeline is crucial to make sure your wedding stays on track and so you, your vendors, and your guests will know when everything will happen. Coming up with the perfect timeline can be a bit confusing and stressful. You don't have to go about making your wedding day timeline yourself! Your wedding photographer and wedding planner will be helping you with this so if you have any questions be sure to reach out to them. However, to get you started, below are a few things to keep in mind and to consider when it comes to making the perfect wedding day timeline.
Sunset
One of the first things that you want to consider is when sunset is on your wedding day. An easy way to find the sunset for your wedding day is at Time and Date, you just enter in your wedding location and find your wedding date and it will show you exactly when sunset will be. You need to know when sunset will be so you can make sure that all of your portraits (couple portraits, wedding party portraits, family portraits, etc) will happen before sunset happens. For example, if you want to have a sunset ceremony, then you will need to do all of your portraits before your ceremony. You just want to make sure that you will have enough light available for your portraits before the sun sets!
Timing For Portraits
Your wedding day portraits (couple portraits, wedding party portraits, and family portraits) are one of the major events of your wedding from a photography standpoint. These are the photos that you will print, frame, and display in your home. You won't want to skimp on this time. Talk with your wedding photographer and see how much time they need for each of these portrait sections of the day this will make sure that you have enough time built into your timeline for those portraits.
Hair/Makeup Start Time
If you, your wedding party, or parents will be getting their hair and makeup professionally done then you will want to make sure you have enough time built into your timeline for that. Your hair and makeup artists will need a certain amount of time per person and if that isn't built into your timeline then your day can easily get thrown off track. Build in some buffer time with the getting ready portion of the day too in case someone's hair needs to be fixed or if someone decides to get their makeup done last minute.
Reception End Time
Do you have a certain time that you need to be out of the venue? Or do you just want to end the reception at a certain time so you can get some sleep before you jet off to your honeymoon the next day? These are both things to consider. You will want to plan out your dinner and reception events so that everything can happen along with some open dancing before you need to be out of the venue.
Ceremony Start/End Time
Does your ceremony venue have a certain time that you need the ceremony to start? Are you planning on having a full Mass or just a short ceremony? Are you wanting an evening wedding or morning wedding? These are things to keep in mind as well. Once you get your ceremony time figured out then you are able to work from your ceremony time back to when you need to get ready and then from the ceremony end time until the time you need to be out of the reception venue.
Now that you have the above times written down, the easiest way to go about your timeline is to work backwards from the ceremony and then work from the ceremony to the reception. This will help you by working through your timeline in chunks vs looking at it in one full chunk. As you are making your timeline, build in an extra 5-10 minutes here and there. This will make sure that if something does run behind, you will be able to catch back up and get things back on schedule. And remember, you're not in this along, your photographer and planner will help you with this! If you are a Jasmine Norris Photography couple, then I offer complimentary timeline drafting!
