Timeline for Wedding

That was tricky for us, too. We have an all day venue, as well.
I started by figuring that we wanted to take sunset pics after the ceremony. So I googled the sunset for that day and started building from there. We ended up with a 5:15 pm ceremony. Reception starting at 6 lasting til 11. I also took in consideration dinner starting at 6, people may get hungry again if we run past 11.
We skipped the cocktail hour.
Good luck!

I copied someone else's (lol!) Seriously, having a template/example to go off will help you get started, and you can adjust as you go.

View Quoted Comment I'm highly vonsidering skipping cocktail hour as well cause our ceremony will most likely start at 6 (when the pastor can get there) and don't want to go too late. We have reception space from 10am to midnight and ceremony space from 4-7.

I started by asking how long I wanted things to end, and the latest I wanted the event to run. From there, I estimated how long it should be to set everything up (with buffer room). Ad those times together, and you should get how long to plan the entire day/event for.

From there, there are so many templates for a timeline to choose from! Decide whether you want all the traditional wedding events up front, or spread across the evening. That will help you narrow down what template is best for you.

Also, some vendors may require specific timelines - so that helps too.

I knew I didn't want a gap between my ceremony and reception so I planned according to that. If you want to do a first look then do photos before the ceremony then you have to account for time for that. If you don't want to do a first look then you'd need to do photography after the ceremony but before the reception.

View Quoted Comment We get a cocktail hour with our venue but I’m thinking of only doing it for 45 minutes. I have our ceremony starting at 5 and was thinking we could have dinner started about 6:15. Maybe 6:30 if we decide to do the first dance after the entrance. Our reception also ends at 11