Do guests know to arrive before wedding start time on invitations?

A majority of guests will arrive earlier than your start time, but you may have some stragglers. It's really a know your crowd thing. Both my FH and I have family and friends who habitually arrive right on time or always late so we already plan to wait 10 minutes before starting the ceremony.

I’m dealing with this right now & agree with Melanie about knowing your crowd. My brother & his wife are notoriously late for everything. We need to have family there by 215 with the photographer coming at 230. I told my brother he needs to be there by 130.

So it’s a risk I personally am not willing to take.. my family is 90% Hispanic and would definitely not arrive before set time. My ceremony starts at 6 and on my invites it says 5:30pm. If they arrive early it’s fine they can wait and chat in the meantime better that then empty chairs during your ceremony or people walking in while your bridesmaids or worse you are walking down the aisle! This is just my opinion based on my guest list, take a look at your list and make an informed decision based on that, every family is different

Most responsible adults know not to show up at a wedding at the exact time it starts.

I'm definitely guilty of arriving right at the specified time... especially if the venue is somewhere that not everyone is familiar with.

I have on my wedding website that the 'wedding' starts at 6 but the 'ceremony' starts at 6:15. I am going to have 6 printed on the invitations. I went to a wedding a few summers ago that did something similar and it was a great choice because at the 'start' time most people were still in line to sign the guest book!

Not related to guests not arriving on time - but we decided to have a "pre cocktail hour", but mostly because we are paying for a set amount of hours with our bar service and wanted to make sure we got our moneys worth!

You will probably have people show up a little early - no one wants to walk in right on time and risk potentially walking in during the ceremony, or at least I don't! If I were you, I would plan for some people showing up just a few minutes early. Most will show up earlier rather than later!

Yes nearly all adults know to arrive early/on time. If they have never attended a wedding, which is rare, they have an older relative who does and who lets them know how things work.

I'd hope people know to arrive before the start, but also a "know your crowd" situation. I'd still list the actual start time on your invitations, but if you're concerned, maybe include "please arrive 15 minutes early to be seated" or something on your wedding website and reach out to those you're particularly concerned about? Also plan maybe a 5-15 minute buffer into your timeline in case you need to start late.

I would hope that people would know to arrive early. Our ceremony starts at 6pm but I did put on our website’s FAQ page to arrive at 5:30. I think we may actually start at 6:10 for the stragglers.

Usually people arrive early, but what we did is we included a FAQs section on our wedding website and told people to arrive no later than 15 minutes before the ceremony is supposed to start. Hopefully that will encourage people to be on time. I will say that FH and I did actually arrive late to a wedding once, it was an out of state wedding and we got lost, so we ended up coming in right as the bride was walking down, and we respectfully waited until she walked down the aisle before we went and took our seats in the back. So hopefully if guests show up late they have the same respect.

My ceremony was 15 minutes past the hour. So on the invitation said something like "please arrive by ___ hour for the ceremony 15 minutes past ___ hour". No one was late, most people arrived much 10-20min earlier than the suggested hour.

My ceremony starts at 6:30PM, my invitation says 6PM. We will be starting at 6:30PM; if 30 minutes isn’t enough time I really don’t know what to say but our crowd knows 99% of the time we are on time so we will see what happens.

Most adults are very respectful of start times. People who are chronically late are late to make an entrance and be noticed and simply do not care nor respect the other person’s time.
When it comes to weddings especially, there isn’t such a thing as “being fashionably late”. That’s just being rude and disrespectful.
Plan your wedding and start it when it’s supposed to start. Guests had weeks if not months to figure out how to get to the wedding on time.