What time to put on wedding invitations?

If your ceremony is going to start at 6, you should either put 6 or 5:45. If I were a guest and told to come at 5 and the ceremony didn't actually start until 6, then I'd be pissed and would probably leave

If your wedding starts at 6:00 you put 6:00 on your invitations.

I'd recommend putting 5:30 or even 5:45. This way your guests aren't waiting an hour for the ceremony to start. You will most likely have late guests, but I don't think you have to have a full hour gap in case of late guests. Most guests arrive within 15-20 minutes prior to the time on the invitation. Our wedding was set to start at 4:05pm, and we put 3:45 on our invitations.

I listed 6:30 on mine. I know the guests will come sooner and so I am not worried. If we go over time, I don’t care. I look at it like a guideline. We have all night to enjoy ourselves. A few minutes over is not going to be a problem.

If anything I would put a start time of 15 minutes before, anything else is way too long. What if someone shows up 15 minutes early to the scheduled time? Then they would be waiting so long for the thing to start. You could also schedule it 15 minutes later and get started early if you feel like everyones there.

Ultimately there's just a ton of people that will be early, more so than late, so how long are you making them wait with nothing to do?