Ceremony time

We started ours at 4PM. And the reception started around 5p.

Do you a specific start time for reception? Some have mandatory start times while others are flexible. Work backward from your cocktail hour start time. Is the ceremony at the reception venue or do guests have to travel? Are you taking all pictures before or after the ceremony?


Scenario A: same venue so no travel and pictures taken before the ceremony with a 5pm cocktail hour as required by the venue. Figure 15-25 minutes for receiving line/dismissing the rows to greet all your guests. Then roughly 15-30 minutes for the ceremony depending on how simple/elaborate your ceremony is. Then the length of your processional song..usually a few seconds to a minute. That would be roughly 4pm for a ceremony start time, with time padded just to be safe. When your processional starts is the time listed on invites.
Scenario B: Ceremony is same length and pictures taken before but guests have to travel to reception venue. Pad an additional 30-40 minutes as necessary to allow for travel with traffic and parking. Ceremony would start at 3pm.

Our ceremony will start at 5:30, cocktail hour at 6:00, dinner at 7:00.

Are you interested in sunset pictures? I was, so I looked at the sunset time for my date to determine the golden hour (the ideal time for outdoor pictures) and worked backwards from there to determine my ceremony start time.

We got married in July and our ceremony started at 4:30 followed by cocktail hour and our grand entrance was at 6:15 to give everyone enough time to get to their seats when the ballroom was open.

It's quite popular for weddings to begin at 16:00.

I would ask your photographer so you don’t miss any photo opps. We narrowed our start time for our wedding in April by talking with our photographer.

I had a mid june wedding and started mine at 5pm

We're February but also having a late afternoon wedding. Our ceremony will start at 4pm and we will have cocktail hour and then reception starting between 6 and 630. Still working out the timeline a little bit.