What’s your itinerary looking like?

Take the time your ceremony starts and go backwards / forward from there on.


I.e. I’d your ceremony starts at 4, you’ll need to by there for 3:30 I would say. Do you plan to do a first look? If yes then put in travel time to 3:30 (ie 3-3:30 travel) and that means your first look should be around 1:30/2-3) etc.

We did our grand entrance 15 minutes into cocktail hour so we had 45 minutes to mingle before sitting down to dinner. After dinner, we finished mingling (approx 30 minutes), then did speeches after. We had the option to do speeches in between courses but didn't want people focused more on eating lol. After speeches, we did first dance and parent dances then jumped into party mode! We were going to do the cake before the first dance but forgot about it until after our photographer left and MC asked if we still were cutting the cake. We ended up cutting the cake when the late night snack came out. Some offered to take photos of the cake cutting so we still have that lol

Timeline:

5:30p Cocktail hour starts

5:45p Grand Entrance

6:30p Dinner

8:00p Finish Dinner and mingle

8:30p Speeches

9:00p Cake cutting SUPPOSED to happen, did first dance instead, bar opens

9:05p Parent Dance

9:10p Dancefloor Open

9:30p Photographer left

10:30p Late night snack and ACTUAL cake cutting

Hope this helps!

Entry

First Dance

Father Daughter Dance - Everyone else joins halfway

Bride & Groom Thank You Speech - were doing one.

Dinner

MOH Speech

BM Speech

Parents Speech

Anyone else - goes into a sparkling wine toast

Cake

Dancing!

We had speeches during supper but waited until the last table got their food to start. And although we didn't cut the cake we would have done that before dessert - or we would have waited until part way into the dancing before the late night snack.

First dance was right after speeches and then the Father/Daughter and Mother/Son dance followed. After that the dance floor was open to everybody.

Its hard cuz people will be walking to and from the bar, going outside to smoke and just generally talking while speeches are going on. im doing mine during dinner at least i know everyone will be seated haha im not doing a cake cutting were just gonna grab a couple photos of us pretending to cut the cake. our first dance will be before dinner. write out everything your doing for the entire day and write in all the times you know are 100% set in stone then play around with the other times and order of things to do for the evening

Our venue has a no speeches between meals rule so we are doing them before dinner. That said, we are only having 2 short speeches, so hopefully people aren't too hungry! We will be doing our first dance after our entrance - people start to get chatty/distracted after dinner, and mostly because our photographer is only with us for 6 hours and I don't want her to miss it if dinner runs late. We are having pies for dessert, but will probably cut that after we give our thank you speech after our plated dessert. Ask your venue how long dinner service usually takes - our venue advised about 2 hours.

Weddings within the family has had speeches done before dinner or after so that everyone is seated and attention is given. Your itinerary can work around dinner the way you envision it.

The way reception was timed out went

Grand Entrance

Mother/Sons Dance

Cake cutting

Speeches

Dinner

View quoted message Ahh all of that sounds like it flows so smoothly!!

We’re going to do speeches in between the meals - that way people aren’t eating and not listening.


We’re doing our cake cutting after dinner but it’s just going to be private - no one will watch us do it - it’s only for pictures.
Our first dance will be likely after our thank you speech and after our first dance we’ll open up the dance floor!