Subscribe The Importance of Wedding Day Timelines
- Question: Do you know what one of the biggest mistakes brides and grooms make when planning for their big day?
- Answer: They don’t make a timeline for the day of the wedding!
- Question: Why are timelines important?
- Answer: First of all, sitting down and budgeting your time will help you find out if you will need to re-arrange or skip some things in order to stay within your time range for events and vendors. Making executive decisions on the day of your wedding is an unnecessary stress and you most likely will not have time then to make an informed decision.
- Question: Why write out a timeline, when I know things won’t happen exactly on schedule/as planned?
- Answer: Like previously mentioned, making a timeline will help you find out what’s important to you and how you can re-arrange things to make everything fit in. When you write out your timeline you should over-estimate how long things will take, ensuring enough time in case things are not running “on time.” (It’s actually not “in case” ‚Äî you can count on things not going exactly as scheduled.)
Start working on your timeline as soon as you are ready to begin wedding planning. Even before you pick a date and start booking your ceremony and reception sites, you should have a rough timeline on paper. This will help you know how much time you will need with vendors, how much time you’ll need between events, etc. Very often couples will book a ceremony site and a reception site with too little or too much time between the two events. Start thinking now about pictures you’ll want following your ceremony, including travel time to scenic spots you want for the backdrop of your photos. What will your guests do between the ceremony and reception? Even if you have to rework your timeline several times, starting now will be worth it.
Make a very detailed timeline covering all your planned events for the day (not just for the time between the ceremony and the end of the reception). Include details like when the florist will be setting up at the church (even if you won’t be there yet) and when the DJ is due to arrive at the reception to start setting up, etc. Having a master timeline, covering all aspects of the day, will be extremely useful in many ways. Like mentioned earlier, it will help you to see and plan for the big picture and help you to catch potential issues. Such a master timeline will also help you to keep everything organized; you’ll have all the information regarding your appointments, vendors and bridal party all in one place. Make sure you include the names and contact numbers for your vendors on your master timeline, as well.
Every time there was a question, problem or decision to be made I was having to handle it because no one else knew exactly what was supposed to happen.
Just before your wedding, finalize your timeline (accommodating the inevitable last minute changes). Give copies of it to the people who will be helping you keep the big day running smoothly (coordinators, mothers, aunts, friends, etc.). Go over it with them, so they understand it. Trust me when I say this: I wish I had been given this advice when I was getting married! I had a timeline, but no one else knew it. Every time there was a question, problem or decision to be made I was having to handle it because no one else knew exactly what was supposed to happen. Once you go over your timeline with the people who will be helping to keep the day on track, let them know you want them to handle things ‚Äî that you don’t want to be bothered with every issue and detail on your big day. I will be writing an entire blog entry on this issue next week.Give a simplified version of your timeline to key vendors (photographer(s), DJ, church and reception coordinators, etc.). Begin their timeline just before their part in the day starts. This helps your vendors and will result in them being able to best serve you. Luckily our DJ went over our reception timeline with us and was able to help us get things back on track when we had a major set back (our limo never arrived to take us from the church to the reception and we got behind schedule by about an hour and a half). He knew that we only had our photographer until a certain time and would need to fit in all our traditional events (cutting cake, tossing bouquet, etc.) before our photographer left. He made it happen and nothing seemed too rushed! We will soon have his information and website listed on our Resources page.
Equally important: Give your wedding party a timeline and go over it with them (maybe at your rehearsal). Chances are your wedding party (especially when it’s not a small ones) will have a few people who won’t know what is fully expected of them. Taking the time to go over where they need to be and when will save you time, stress and possibly money on the wedding day. Alex and I have covered weddings where members of the wedding party obviously didn’t know the day’s agenda. We’ve seen it all: members of the wedding party mingling with guest outside of the church when they were supposed to be inside taking formal group shots; wedding party members not showing up to the reception on time; bridesmaids showing up to the church or bride’s house just in time for portraits but not dressed yet (making everyone else, who have been dressed for quite some time already, wait for them …), etc.
Tomorrow I will post some sample timelines to help you with writing your own.
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