The Ultimate Guide to Your Wedding Timeline (And Why a Good One Is So Important)
A good wedding timeline is the very top thing that can make or break both your wedding photography and your own experience of your wedding day.
Wedding timelines serve as a kind of script, ensuring that the many people involved in your wedding day—yourselves, your vendors, your wedding party, and family and friends—are all on the same page about what needs to happen on your wedding day, when.
Why do I need a wedding timeline?
Because by their very nature weddings are balancing many moving parts, a formal wedding timeline ensures all of those parts fit together seamlessly for a smooth wedding day.
Writing wedding timelines with couples and planners, we have uncovered and resolved many conflicts that could have caused significant problems on the wedding day. Two examples stick out in my memory:
In writing the wedding timeline 10 weeks before the wedding, we discovered that based on the venue rental start time, there wasn’t enough time for all of the bridesmaids to get their hair and makeup done in the on-site bridal suite. The couple was able to choose whether to change their venue rental to start earlier, add more stylists to their hair and makeup team to complete those services faster, skip doing a first look, or move back their ceremony time, based on their overall wedding priorities.
In working with a planner on the timeline for a winter wedding timeline, we uncovered that the couple’s ceremony, set to take place in a greenhouse without any artificial lighting, was scheduled to take place after dark. Because we discovered it in advance while writing the wedding timeline, the couple was able to weigh their options between renting lighting for the greenhouse, using a different ceremony site at the venue, or moving their ceremony start time to earlier in the day.
Who creates my wedding timeline?
If you have hired with a wedding planner: Typically that planner will be the “owner” of your wedding timeline. They will work with you (the couple) and your vendor team (photographer, florist, venue, caterer, etc.) to gather information and craft a timeline that balances each vendor’s needs and your priorities as a couple. Every planner is a little bit different, but in our experience, most wedding planners begin writing your wedding timeline between 3 months and 1 month before your wedding day—and typically your timeline is finalized and shared with the whole vendor team 1-2 weeks before your wedding day, to allow for last-minute adjustments.
If you are working with a month-of coordinator or a venue-provided “coordinator”: Some coordinators include writing a wedding timeline in their services, while some coordinators do not. Venues that provide a “coordinator” employed in-house by the venue may or may not offer wedding timeline assistance—but beware that venue coordinators are typically only focused on elements of your wedding day happening at their venue. For couples incorporating multiple locations into the wedding plans (such as getting ready at a nearby hotel, or having a church ceremony), the venue coordinator will not help with (or not pay nearly as close attention to) those off-site details. They are still critically important and should be included in your timeline.
If you are not retaining professional planning or coordination services: You, the couple, will be responsible for creating this timeline yourselves. If you are an Aimee Custis Photography client, let us know that you are DIYing your timeline, and we are happy to help. We have created an easy-to-follow template to get you started, with detailed instructions on what to do once you have a draft timeline, to set you up for wedding day success.
Is there a standard wedding timeline I can use for my wedding?
All wedding days are different, and your timeline will be unique due to travel times between venues, cultural traditions (such as ketubah signing), guest count, the size of your family and wedding party, whether or not you opt to do a first look, and more.
That said, if you will need to DIY your timeline, or you simply want to get a sense, it is entirely possible to start with an example timeline and modify it to reflect your wedding day. Or, if we will be photographing your wedding day, all Aimee Custis Photography clients receive timeline planning as a complementary service.
A model standard wedding timeline
This 9-hour timeline is based on one of our most popular photography packages. It assumes a typical 30-minute ceremony at 6:00 PM, a first look, a wedding party to photograph, and travel from an offsite getting ready location to a single venue for photos, ceremony, and reception.
Person + Person’s Wedding Timeline // 9 Hours of Photo Coverage
Make sure to put the name(s) and address(es) of all venues at the top of your timeline for easy reference, including getting ready, ceremony, photo, and reception locations!
1:15 PM: Personal Details + Getting Ready Candids (Photo coverage begins) (~40 minutes)
2:00 PM: Getting Dressed (15-30 minutes)
2:30 PM: Solo Window Light Portraits and/or Buffer Time (~15 minutes)
2:45 PM: Travel Time (varies, here 30 minutes)
Plan for at least 1.5x what Google Maps says, to account for traffic and any delays like waiting for your car service to arrive.3:15 PM: First Look + Couple’s Portraits (35-45 minutes)
4:00 PM: Wedding Party Portraits (25-35 minutes)
4:35 PM: Family Formals (25-40 minutes)
5:15 PM: Jewish Ketubah Signing (15-30 minutes)
5:45 PM: Couple’s Breather Time + Venue Details (~15-30 minutes)
6:00 PM: Ceremony (~30 minutes)
6:30 PM: Couple’s Time Alone (5-10 minutes)
6:30 PM: Cocktail Hour, Extended Family Formals, and Reception Decor (~60 minutes)
Timing Varies: Sunset Portraits (20 minutes, prior to sunset)
You can Google “sunset time YOUR WEDDING DATE WEDDING CITY/STATE” to find out sunset time on your wedding day.7:30 PM: Reception (2 - 3.5 hours of photography coverage)
We recommend photography coverage ends after cake cutting + 30 minutes of dance party.
Wedding timeline elements beyond photography
Of course, while your wedding day photography timeline is an important aspect of your overall wedding timeline, it’s not the whole thing. Your full timeline will list out all of this, and so much more, based on your other vendors’ plans and requirements. Catering, DJ or band, florist, beauty team, and every other vendor should be integrated into your timeline.
You wedding timeline should also include things like arrival times and locations for parents and VIPs.
A good wedding timeline includes details that may seem less directly relevant to the couple, but are extremely relevant to wedding vendors, like what time the venue opens for your vendors to set up, what time each vendor is arriving at the venue, what times the wedding party and family need to depart and arrive at various places, and behind-the-scenes tasks like, “florist delivers bouquets to hotel room,” and “catering team clears salad plates.”
In short, few details are too small or mundane to include in the wedding timeline. When in doubt, a detail should be included in the wedding timeline. What is written down is remembered.
A model elopement or micro wedding timeline
Elopements and micro weddings tend to have fewer professional vendors and fewer elements in general—but are less likely to have a planner or coordinator involved to write the timeline. Elopements and micro weddings come in myriad shapes and sizes these days, but here is one model micro wedding timeline to get you started.
This timeline assumes 2.5 hours of photo coverage for a micro wedding at a private venue such as a restaurant or historic house/museum, with a guest count of 15-30 people, but no wedding party.
Person + Person’s Micro Wedding Timeline // 2.5 Hours of Photo Coverage
Make sure to put the name(s) and address(es) of all venues at the top of your timeline for easy reference, including getting ready, ceremony, photo, and reception locations!
4:00 PM: Venue rental begins, couple arrives and stows supplies, checks in with venue point-of-contact
4:15 PM: Couple’s portraits (35-45 minutes)
4:45 PM: Guests begin arriving // couple greets guests
5:00 PM: Ceremony (~30 minutes)
5:30 PM: Family formals and friend-group photos (~20 minutes)
At micro weddings and elopements, often every guest present is included in group photos5:50 PM: Begin sitting down to dinner
6:00 PM: Dinner service begins by restaurant or catering staff (or buffet)
6:15 PM: Toast or speech (often by couple or parent(s) present)
6:30 PM: Cake cutting and/or couple sneaks out for sunset photos
6:45 PM: Photography services conclude, guests continue to merry-make
A detailed breakdown of each element of a wedding timeline
We’ve broken out in the rest of this post what each element of the standard wedding day we’ve outline above encompasses. While micro weddings and elopements tend to follow a simpler format, understanding a full wedding timeline for a larger wedding day is a helpful starting place to envision what you do or do not want to include in your micro wedding.
1:15 PM: Personal Details + Getting Ready Candids (Photo Coverage Begins)
(~45+ minutes)
Couples often tell us after-the-fact that looking back, they love having beautiful shots of their details. It’s an important part of the story, and we appreciate time to shoot the clothing, shoes, invitations, bouquets + bouts, cufflinks, rings, etc. These shots help us as photographers warm up for the day. If these photos are something you want, talk to your florist as early as possible about arranging to have your personal florals and styling blooms delivered to your getting ready location for this time-block.
Once we’ve captured details, we’ll turn our attention to capturing some shots of you and your friends and family getting ready. Ladies, if you want any cute photo ops like a champagne toast with your girls, or matching pajama shots, add an extra 5 minutes! Gentlemen, it’s rare you need extra time—men’s getting ready is less involved. You can thank the patriarchy.
If you’re working with professional hair and makeup artists, be sure to check with them and make sure they know what time you need to have your hair and makeup complete and be ready to get dressed! (You may need to start earlier than you think.)
2:00 PM: Getting Dressed
(15-30 minutes)
After details, it’s time to get dressed! We encourage parents and any wedding party members to be dressed before the couple, so everyone looks nice in those images. Once dressed, you can put on your jewelry, shoes, etc. For those of you wearing a dress, if it has a long row of tiny buttons in the back that actually need to be buttoned, pack a crochet hook to make it easier, and plan for 30 minutes. (Anyone with clothes that are simpler to put on can figure 15 minutes.)
2:30 PM: Solo Window Light Portraits and/or Buffer Time
(15-20 minutes)
Once you’re dressed, we will shoot 15-20 minutes of individual portraits (at Aimee Custis Photography, we call these “window light portraits”) before departing the getting ready location.
We encourage having 15 minutes of “window light portraits” spelled out on the timeline as their own line, so that they don’t accidentally get overlooked. These 15 minutes are also the Aimee Custis Photography way of building in some buffer time early in the day should anything be running late or going long.
Gentlemen’s getting ready is usually less involved—but just as important—as women’s. Your lead photographer be with one of you, and their assistant will join your partner, assuming you both want getting ready photos. It’s also 100% okay if one or both of you opt out of personal details, getting ready, and getting dressed photos, in which case we’ll usually start photo coverage with first look + couple’s portraits.
2:45 PM: Travel Time
(varies, here 30 minutes)
Be sure to think about the travel time and traffic to and from your getting ready location and your venue. In our experience, it is wise to allocated more time than you think you need: a good rule of thumb is to assume wedding travel takes 1.5x as much time as Google Maps suggests. Everything takes a little longer with big groups, and when you’re wearing formalwear.
3:15 PM: First Look + Couple’s Portraits
(35-80 minutes)
This is one of our favorite parts of the day, regardless of whether a couple wants a first look that is an emotional moment, or they’re opting to do couple’s portraits pre-ceremony purely for logistics’ sake. Portraits are fun time to spend together!
4:00 PM: Wedding Party Portraits
(25-45 minutes)
We subtly build in extra buffer time throughout the day just in case anything unexpected holds us up. One way to make sure we stay on schedule for group pictures is to make sure people with boutonnieres put them on before they arrive for portraits. During this time we’ll make sure to get some great shots of both sides of the wedding party, separately and together.
If you opt not to see each other until the ceremony (no first look), we’ll split this up and typically do as many of the wedding party combinations as we can pre-ceremony, and then gather the wedding party again for 10-15 minutes immediately after family formals to finish up the full group shots.
Of course, for couples opting out of having a wedding party, that’s 25-35 minutes you don’t have to schedule!
4:35 PM: Family Formals
(25-40 minutes)
“Family formals” is what we call those posed group photos that are so often important to older family members for framing and displaying at home. They most frequently take place one of two times: either after wedding party portraits, or immediately after the ceremony during cocktail hour. For most weddings, we’ll want ~ 30 minutes for family formals.
We will will work with you in the weeks beforehand to think about what combinations you and/or your family want, and list them all out in the best format using our Harry Potter-themed family formals planning spreadsheet. We like to shoot these portraits outdoors (if possible) so that they resemble more natural family portraits.
5:15 PM: Jewish Ketubah Signing
(20-30 minutes)
For couples celebrating in the Jewish tradition, your ketubah (wedding contract) signing is an added element to your day, which typically takes place after photos and before your ceremony. Talk to your rabbi (or other officiant) about their preferences and needs to plan for this tradition: typically, the officiant, couple, their witnesses, and family are present and seated around a table.
5:45 PM: Couple’s Breather Time + Venue Details
(~15-30 minutes)
Typically, wedding planners like to have at least 30 minutes between finishing your wedding party and family portraits, and the ceremony start time as listed on your wedding invitation, because as we’ve mentioned above, buffer time is important (and TBH, not all wedding photographers are as good about adhering to timelines as we are). While we are always happy to oblige that, if group photos and the ceremony are in the same location, we feel comfortable (based on the buffer time we build in earlier in the day) on doing as little as 15 minutes. But you definitely want at least 15 minutes, to give yourselves a quick moment to cool off (in the summer), have a drink of water, and make a stop in the bathroom. And then it’ll be time to line up for the ceremony!
In the meantime, your photography team will step away from you, to set up lighting and capture images of your ceremony venue and details.
6:00 PM: Ceremony
(~30 minutes)
Time to get married! Most ceremonies are about 30 minutes long, give or take. At the short end, some very brief and purely civil ceremonies take 20 minutes. At the longer end, Catholic ceremonies and some Jewish ceremonies typically run 40-45 minutes, and full Catholic masses somewhere around an hour.
6:30 PM: Couple’s Time Alone
(5-10 minutes)
While this tradition originates in the Jewish faith as the Yichud, we strongly recommend that ALL of our couples build 5-10 minutes of time to themselves—just the two of you—into the timeline immediately after the ceremony. This is a chance to catch your breath, take in the fact that you are married, and have a moment together before diving back into the celebration. Upon request, most full-service catering companies will have drinks of your choice and a selection of cocktail hour appetizers waiting for you in a private space just for this. (We LOVE those caterers!)
6:30 PM: Cocktail Hour, Extended Family Formals, and Reception Decor
(~60 minutes)
Most cocktail hours last for… well, one hour. But depending on the setup of your wedding day and the various spaces you are using at your venue, your catering team may recommend or require a slightly longer cocktail hour to accommodate necessary setup.
From a photography perspective, because most of our couples opt for first look, wedding party, and family formals before their ceremony, they get to actually attend most of their cocktail hour and greet their guests there!
However, if your family setup warrants it, we will often grab a handful more family formals—with extended groups like “the cousins” or “mom’s side of the family”—at cocktail hour, as soon as the two of you have exited your 5-10 minutes of time alone. When this is the case, we’ll advise you on prepping those family members to expect photos. This is also a great time for us to informally attempt any other group photos you’re looking for, like “undergrad friends” or “mom’s besties.”
Once we’ve finished up any group photos, one photographer on your team will head into the reception space to capture photos of your decor and details (such as your cake, decorations, etc.) and set up lighting for the reception, while the other photographer will stay at the cocktail hour and focus on candid photos.
Timing Varies: Sunset Portraits
(20 minutes, prior to sunset)
Technically, these are optional, but we can’t recommend them enough. We always ask for a few extra minutes to sneak out and take a few “just married” portraits, during the 20-30 minutes before sunset. Because it’s sunset-based, this bit of your day can fall anywhere from during cocktail hour to sometime during the reception. (To be honest, at winter weddings, the extremely early sunset time makes these often impossible to include.) Between the light and the glow on both of your faces from being married, these photos are ALWAYS cherished.
7:30 PM: Reception
(2 - 3.5 hours of photography coverage)
This is when the party begins! By this part of the day, the photography timeline is more in the hands of your coordinator, DJ or band, and caterer. We’re no longer racing against the sun for portraits, so timing isn’t as crucial, and the photographers can focus on the reception events as they unfold.
While every wedding is different and we will always happily stay longer, we recommend purchasing just enough wedding coverage as part of your package to cover both the cake cutting and 30-45 minutes of open dancing: the same people on the dance floor when it opens will be the ones there at the end of the night, only looking worse-for-wear. Unless lots and lots of dancing photos or documenting a grand exit are important to you, we honestly recommend you put this part of your wedding budget toward other priorities!
If you’re writing your own timeline and looking for guidance on what your reception timeline should look like, we’re happy to help: building your first draft wedding timeline for you, based on the traditions you want to include, is a complementary service we offer all Aimee Custis Photography couples—just ask.
A final note about wedding photography and timelines
At Aimee Custis Photography, we understand how important your wedding day experience is to how much you love your wedding photos. If you're stressed or rushed in a moment captured on camera, those feelings will come rushing back to you in the photos. And when a wedding day is running super-behind, photos are the first thing to hit the cutting room floor. That’s why we care so much about wedding timelines: they’re our #1 defense against a bad experience.
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