CREATING A WEDDING DAY TIMELINE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS!
A wedding day timeline is one of the most critical elements to “get right” when it comes to your wedding day. On the surface it might seem that a timeline is meant to keep you on track throughout the day – and that’s true but its purpose goes way beyond that one important thing.
All of your suppliers rely on an accurate timeline; your venue requires one; your wedding party uses it; your MC needs it and of course you really do need to understand that timeline while prepping for your day. Believe it or not, having a timeline that works will even save you money.
Most couples know that they need one, but they don’t know how to go about creating one or how detailed it needs to be.
I’m here to make this easy for you.
The number one rule is to start from your ceremony time and work BOTH forwards and backwards to determine your basic outline. What do I mean?
Well, one of the things you will have done fairly early on in your planning process is to set your ceremony time so you knew what to put on your invitations. This won’t change from that moment on and it’s really the only set time in your day.
After that, you need to know some basic rules. You need to allow 45 minutes for every updo and another 45 minutes for makeup for each person. From there it’s simple math.
How many girls are having their hair and makeup done? You will either need to allow time for a single hair stylist and makeup artist – or book more than one of each depending upon how many people are being prepped.
Let’s break this down. If you have 2pm ceremony time – and you need allow travel time (say 30 minutes), dressing time (another 30 minutes) and you have 4 girls to prep (3 hours for hair and 3 hours for makeup done concurrently), you need to start getting ready no later than 10am. That’s if you have a single stylist and makeup artist.
If you have more girls or moms and grandmas – either expect a very early morning start or hire more people. Either way it will cost the same.
Alright, those are the biggest hurdles for the morning prep time and that is by far the easiest part to figure out. Moving forwards from your ceremony time there are far more things you need to consider.
Here are some questions you’ll need to answer:
- How long is your ceremony?
- How long does it take you to get to the reception site from the ceremony site or the photo site?
- How long have you allocated for photos if you are doing them between ceremony and reception?
- How long is your cocktail reception?
- When is dinner scheduled to be served?
- Are you doing a special couple / wedding party introduction?
- How many courses are you serving?
- How long have you booked your photographer for?
- What hours did you book your DJ for?
- How many speeches have you planned?
- Will you be doing a cake cutting?
- How about a first dance?
- Will you be playing any games?
- Will you be doing a special couple dance / mother-son dance / father-daughter dance?
- Are you serving a midnight buffet?
- When is last call?
- Are you doing a complicated décor set up?
- When do you have to vacate the premises by?
The fun part is taking all of the information above and plugging them into your timeline.
I’ve created a short video that walks you through what we did for a real couple that takes into consideration the elements above and how we managed the day. You’ll even hear me explain how we allocated the appropriate times and why. It’s much easier for me to show you than to try and explain it all.
Just click the link below and enter your name and email address – I’ll send you the link to the video so you can watch it and see it all come together.
Click here to get watch the video now!
Lori x