Day of timeline

You have your ceremony start time, which is a good starting point!

I'd work from that: Ceremony is at 7pm so...

2:30-4pm - Photos (usually need 1 1/2 to 2 hours)

4:30-6pm - Have dinner at the restaurant

6:30pm - arrive at ceremony location

7pm - Ceremony (how long, 1/2 hour?)

7:30p-8p - additional photos (if needed)

8pm - grand entrance/first dance/parent dances (could do mother/daughter and mother/son)

After dances (8:15ish) - thank guests for coming

After thank-you speech(8:20ish) - dancing for everyone!

1am or when you have to be out - exit/clean up

View quoted message You have your timing for pictues set. All that needs to be decided is when you want to start getting ready/make up shots

This is VERY basic as i dont know what youre doing but here yah go:

3:30 pm – pictures with bride, groom, wedding party and families at X location

5 pm – lunch at XX location with bride, groom, wedding party and families

7 pm – ceremony (is this 30 minutes?)

7:30 – bride and groom speech

7:40 – garter toss or bouquet toss or parent dances or wedding entertainment like dancers

9 pm – dancing

Hmmmm, ok - so first things first.

Is the ceremony and reception happening at the same venue? Either way, how long is the ceremony aka when will you be able to start the reception with the grand entrance?

From there you you are going straight into the first dance, then you were saying that the parent dances are up in the air (may I suggest doing a Mother/Daughter dance? - that's what I would do if my Dad wasn't around/with us anymore), so then what else is planned?

Dancing, bouquet toss?, garter toss?, shoe game?, late night meal/snack?, etc?

Then you can start spacing them out.

Start time: __________ for grand entrance

immediately following: first dance

...

...

End time: __________ exit/ clean up (whatever time you have to be out by - I assume 1:00AM?)

View quoted message I have seriously been thinking of a mother/daughter dance. There are some amazing songs out there that would work..... I still have a lot of time to decide that for sure. I want my mother to walk me down the aisle as well.

View quoted message We are likely doing pictures at 3-330 to allow time to eat before the ceremony

View quoted message Our “ grand entrance” will be our first dance since we are just moving right from the ceremony space to the reception space. No cake cutting , his parent dance is undecided at this point, my mother thinks that since I can’t have a father/daughter dance than the mother/son dance doesn’t need to happen. I’m of the opinion that it’s up to them if they want to do it. But I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it.

Are you doing a first dance? An entrance? Cake cutting? Any parents dances? You may want to decide what time those things will be at as well.

Best starting place, start with your ceremony time and work backwards.
Give yourself time to get to the ceremony after your dinner.
To be safe I would maybe say restaurant for 4/430 depending on how many are going and how far away the restaurant is from your ceremony.
Then your pictures. You may want to give yourself 2 ish hours. So if you do dinner at 430, do pictures from 2-4 to give yourself time to travel.
And then figure out how many of you are getting ready before hand. And the time it will take to complete that.
Make sure when doing your timeline you give your self some buffer time incase things take longer than expected. And always give a good amount of time for travel incase there is traffic!

One way to set your schedule is by starting your getting ready time for 3:30 and go from there. How long you think you will need to get pictures taken. Ceremony time, reception, first dance, cake cutting and speech.

3:30
4:00
4:30
So on.....