Friday night wedding timeline

Most guests will take off all day or half day from work and go straight to the wedding. Almost no one will go home first. You are giving them plenty of notice between save the dates at 6 months and invites at 6 weeks to schedule time off as needed.

I think having a evening wedding on Friday is a great idea!

Gives guests enough time to get off work, get ready, get to your wedding. It'll help with the heat too, like you mentioned! I would just make sure you have enough time to get as many photos as you can done before the sun sets!

Sounds great! They’ll have a great celebration and party to look forward to on a Friday. 💃🏽 I agree about the taking photos early, and of course getting the night shots too

View Quoted Comment I’m also thinking about doing a sunset outside ceremony. Sunset will be at 8pm on that day. So, I was thinking maybe have the ceremony (7:30-8), dinner (8:30-9:30), cake cutting at 10:45 and grand exit around 12 or 1. What do you think will be best? Original timeline or sunset ceremony timeline?

Sunset ceremonies are gorgeous, but then that doesn't leave any time for sunset photos of you & FH, so just keep that in mind! We are in the same boat and deciding to do the ceremony before sunset & then use the sunset time for pics. Basically, you'll just have to decide if you want the photos of sunset to be during your ceremony, or during bride/groom pics!

View Quoted Comment I agree with the PP, love sunset ceremonies! That would be beautiful, but also make sure you and FH have time to get those photos too

View Quoted Comment We would take pictures before the ceremony so we could have some daylight pics, then maybe while guests are moving from the ceremony area to the reception area and getting settled...we can get a few sunset pics before our grand entrance.

View Quoted Comment Do you think a 8:30pm dinner will be too late though?

View Quoted Comment I don’t think an 8:30 dinner is too late! Sounds reasonable to me. Not sure if you’re having cocktail food prior to the ceremony? That’s what a friend of mine did for her sunset ceremony

View Quoted Comment Ok good. The plan was to skip cocktail hour and go straight into dinner. It’s already kind of starting late so, I wanted to feed the guests a good real meal as soon as possible. Skipping cocktail hour also saves us some money.

Awww! Im having an August, Friday evening wedding as well. I'm not doing first looks so my photos prior to the ceremony will be solo and prep photos for him and I. We will take our post ceremony/family photos during cocktail hour. I don't think 8:30 is too late for dinner since it pretty much follow after the ceremony.

View Quoted Comment That’s cool! What does your timeline look like roughly?

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Disagree. I and many people would prefer not to take off half a day or would be unable to take off half a day from work, no matter how much notice is given. If I were going to a Friday wedding I would much prefer that it start at 6 pm or later.

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What are your guests doing from 8-8:30?

It's actually very similar to yours.

Prep/pre ceremony photos 4:45-5:45

Ceremony 6:00-6:30

Cocktail Hour/Family Photos 6:30-7:20

Intro & 1st dance 7:30-7:40

Prayer 7:40-7:45

Dinner 7:45-8:45

Toasts 8:30-8:50

Thank you speech 8:50-8:55

Special Dances (Mom & Dad) 9:00-9:10

Open Dance 9:15-10:55

Cake Cutting 9:45-9:50

Bouquet Toss: 10:20-10:25

Farewell/send-off 10:55

View Quoted Comment Moving into the ceremony area, grand entrance, first dance, welcome speech & prayer over the food.