Wedding reception timeline template
The evening on one sheet, from arrival drinks to the last of them, already timed. Move the speeches and everything after them re-flows. The entrance stays where the room was told.
Your wedding reception timeline
Share whole editable version with anyone
One link carries the whole run of show, and whoever opens it gets their own copy. The florist adds their install window, the caterer their service times, and you retype none of it.
- No sign-up, no app to download.
- A QR code on the printed sheet, so paper hands itself on.
- The data is contained in the link. Nothing is uploaded or stored.
| Start | Length | Item | Who |
|---|
Built free at 1pm.app/tools/run-of-show Take it further
Print it, save it, or move it into 1pm to share it live with your crew and suppliers.
Copied. Three steps to have it live:
- Start a free 1pm trial, no card needed.
- Create your event and edit the event portal.
- Choose Paste in and paste. Every row lands with its time and length.
Add a row with a name on it first, then there will be something to copy.
Saved in this browser only. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account to create. Keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose. Use of this tool is subject to our Terms.
The reception timeline in full
Starting at 17:30 it finishes at 22:30, a span of 5h. Change one length and every row below it moves.
| Start | Length | Item | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17:30 | 30 min | Guests arrive for canapés and drinks | Kitchen |
| 18:00 | 15 min | Guests invited inside | MC |
| 18:15 | 10 min | Housekeeping by MC | MC |
| 18:25 pinned | 5 min | Grand entrance | MC |
| 18:30 | 30 min | Entrée served | Kitchen |
| 19:00 | 20 min | Speeches, first round | MC |
| 19:20 | 40 min | Main course served | Kitchen |
| 20:00 | 20 min | Speeches, second round | MC |
| 20:20 | 10 min | Cake cutting | MC |
| 20:30 | 10 min | First dance | DJ |
| 20:40 | 20 min | Dessert and coffee | Kitchen |
| 21:00 | 25 min | Dance floor open | DJ |
| 21:25 | 5 min | Photographer leaves | Photographer |
| 21:30 | 30 min | Announce last drinks | MC |
| 22:00 | 30 min | Drinks package ends. Guests depart | MC |
Why "Grand entrance" is pinned. The grand entrance is pinned to 6.25pm, because that is the moment the room has been told and the kitchen has costed. Arrival, the call inside and housekeeping above it fill the hour exactly, so any minute the canapés run long shows up on the pin as an overrun rather than quietly eating the entrance.
Speeches and service are the same problem
A wedding reception has two clocks running through it and only one of them is written down. The programme is the visible one: entrance, welcome, speeches, cake, dancing. The other belongs to the kitchen, and it is the reason a reception timeline is harder than it looks.
Plated food has to leave the pass at a particular moment and be in front of guests within a few minutes of it. A speech that runs ten minutes long does not just delay the next speech, it strands sixty mains under heat lamps. That is why the courses and the speeches in this template alternate rather than sitting in separate blocks: each speech has a course either side of it, so an overrun costs you a few minutes of service rather than the whole shape of the evening.
Where reception timelines slip
- Seating a room is fifteen minutes. Moving guests from a lawn or a bar through to their tables looks like nothing on paper and never is. That is the whole reason "Guests invited inside" is its own row here: it is the step that makes the entrance late, and the entrance is what the kitchen is waiting on.
- The room flip is an hour of work. Not a gap, not a break. Somebody is clearing a ceremony set and dressing tables while guests are having drinks somewhere else. This sheet starts after that handover, so if the ceremony was in the same room, add the flip above the first row rather than assuming the arrival drinks cover it.
- Speeches run long. Always. Split them across two courses, tell each speaker their length out loud, and give your MC permission to move things on.
- Photographers finish. Most coverage ends an hour or two after the first dance, which is why "Photographer leaves" is a row on this sheet rather than something in the contract nobody reads on the night. Keep it below the cake and the first dance. If the cake is at eleven and the photographer leaves at ten, there is no photograph of the cake.
- Last drinks is a licence, not a preference. Check the finish on this sheet against the bar licence and the venue vacate time, because those two are the ones that cost money to get wrong.
Why the times move on their own
This tool does not store a start time against each row. It stores how long each thing takes and works the times out from the top, so giving the speeches ten more minutes shifts everything after them and leaves everything before them alone. The grand entrance is pinned, which means it stays at 6.25 no matter what happens above it. The arrival hour in front of it is full to the minute on purpose: stretch the canapés and the sheet says so immediately, rather than letting you find out on the night.
If you want the whole day rather than the evening, start from the wedding day timeline template, or build from scratch with the run of show template and builder.
Common questions
Around five hours from arrival drinks to the last of them, though the shape matters more than the length. Canapés outside, guests called in, housekeeping from the MC, the couple in, then food and speeches interleaved rather than stacked: entrée, a first round of speeches, mains, a second round, then cake, first dance, dessert and the floor open. Loading all the speeches into one twenty minute stretch after the mains is the most common way to lose a room, because that is exactly when it wants to get up and move.
Four to five minutes each, and three or four speakers. Whatever you plan for, budget half as much again: twenty minutes of scheduled speeches is a genuine thirty on the night, every time. Splitting them across two courses is the single most effective fix, because it gives the room a break, gives the kitchen a run at service, and means no speaker is following four others.
Together, and earlier than most people put them. Cutting the cake straight before the first dance turns two small moments into one clean handover from the sit-down part of the night to the dancing part, and it gives your photographer a reason to still be there for both. On this template dessert follows twenty minutes later, so if the cake is being served as dessert and your kitchen wants longer than that to plate it, move the cutting up rather than pushing the dance back.
An hour if the ceremony and the reception share a room, and that hour is real work by real people: clearing the ceremony set, dressing the tables, moving the florals across. This template starts at arrival drinks, which is where most receptions are handed over, so if your ceremony is in the same room add the flip as a row above the first one and let the cascade push the rest down. If your venue is doing the flip, ask them how long they actually need rather than guessing.
Yes. Download CSV gives you the running order as a spreadsheet with the times already worked out, ready to open in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. That is the copy to send a venue coordinator or a band who have asked for their own. The other button, Save to a file, writes a .json you can reopen in this builder later, because the spreadsheet goes out but does not come back in.
One document, two audiences. Build the full day, then cut the version each person needs: your band only cares about the entrance, the first dance and when the floor opens. If you want the whole day rather than the evening, the wedding day timeline template starts at getting ready and runs through to farewell.
One event, or every event
This builder does one sheet for one day. If you are planning a one-off, that is genuinely all you need and you should use it. If you run events for a living, the run of show is the last hour of a job that started with a lead weeks earlier, and the sheet on its own cannot hold the rest of it.
This free builder
One-off eventsA good document, and only a document. Nothing to sign up for, nothing stored.
- One event at a time, and no record of the last one.
- Saved in this browser only, so a new device starts empty.
- The link hands over a copy, so your later edits never reach it.
- Print, PDF or CSV, and then the document is on its own.
1pm
Event pros and venuesThe system of record for the whole operation, with the live run of show at the centre of it.
- Leads. A lead form on your own site, every reply in one inbox, nothing lost in a personal mailbox.
- Quotes and confirmations. Send a priced quote, the client accepts and signs it online, and the event is created from it.
- Live run of show. The sheet you just built, shared for real: crew, suppliers and the client watch it update, each seeing only their own rows.
- BEOs for every department. Service style, setup, pax, dietaries, access and vacate, on one brief the kitchen, AV and duty manager can all work from.
- Spaces and capacity. Rooms with their own addresses, access notes and limits, and a hard block on double-booking one twice.
- Menus and food costing. Priced menus, dietary tracking, and recipe and portion costing so you know the margin before you quote it.
- Invoices and payments. Deposits, balances, card payment online, and a one-way sync into Xero when the money lands.
- Contacts, crew, tasks and reporting. Every event you have ever run, searchable, with the people and the numbers attached to it.
If you are an event pro
Planners, caterers, photographers, AV and celebrants run every client job in 1pm end to end: the lead, the quote, the signed confirmation, the run of show and the final invoice, on one record per job instead of five tools and a spreadsheet.
If you are a venue
Hotels, restaurants and event spaces get the function diary, the BEO each department works from, covers and pax, access and vacate, and a kitchen reading the same event the sales team sold, without printing a thing.
Move this run of show into 1pm
Copy to clipboard above takes the whole sheet across in one paste, times, lengths and owners intact. 30 days free, no card, and nothing to install for the people you share it with.