Wedding day timeline template
A full wedding day, from getting ready to farewell, already timed. Change one length and everything after it moves. The ceremony stays where it is.
Your wedding day timeline
| 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.
The wedding timeline in full
Starting at 12:00 it finishes at 22:00, a span of 10h. Change one length and every row below it moves.
| Start | Length | Item | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12:00 | 1h 30 | Getting-ready coverage begins | Photographer |
| 13:30 | 30 min | Bridal party travels to the ceremony | Planner |
| 14:00 | 30 min | Guests arrive, welcome drinks | Venue |
| 15:00 pinned | 30 min | Ceremony | Celebrant |
| 15:30 | 15 min | Confetti and congratulations | Photographer |
| 15:45 | 1h | Canapés and drinks on the lawn | Venue |
| 16:45 | 30 min | Group photographs | Photographer |
| 17:15 | 30 min | Couple portraits | Photographer |
| 17:45 | 15 min | Guests seated for dinner | Venue |
| 18:00 | 45 min | Entrance and first course | Kitchen |
| 18:45 | 30 min | Speeches | MC |
| 19:15 | 20 min | Mains cleared, cake cutting | Kitchen |
| 19:35 | 10 min | First dance | DJ |
| 19:45 | 1h 30 | Dance floor opens | DJ |
| 21:15 | 30 min | Last drinks | Bar |
| 21:45 | 15 min | Farewell | Planner |
Why "Ceremony" is pinned. The ceremony is pinned to 3pm. Getting ready runs to its own clock above it, and the half hour of slack in front of the pin is the buffer you actually have if hair and makeup run long.
Build it backwards from the light
Most wedding timelines are written forwards, starting from when hair and makeup arrive, and most of them are wrong for the same reason: the photographs end up wherever there happens to be room for them. The light does not care about that. It sets when the portraits have to happen, and the portraits set when the ceremony has to happen.
So start with sunset, put the couple portraits in the half hour or so before it, work back through group photographs and congratulations, and you have found your ceremony time. Everything before that is negotiable. Everything after it follows on. That is why the ceremony is the pinned row in this template: it is the fixed point the day is actually built around, even though it sits in the middle.
Where wedding timelines usually go wrong
- Travel is not free. Fifteen minutes on a map is thirty on the day, because it includes finding shoes, gathering a wedding party and parking. Put travel in as its own row every time it happens.
- Group photographs are underestimated by about half. Three to four minutes each is realistic once you count getting the right people in one place. Ask for a list in advance and put the number of groups on the sheet, not just the word "groups".
- Speeches run long. Always. Twenty minutes of scheduled speeches is forty minutes of speeches. Either schedule what will actually happen, or ask your MC to hold the line, but do not plan for the optimistic version and then act surprised.
- Seating a room takes time. Moving two hundred guests from a lawn to their seats is a genuine fifteen minutes. It looks like nothing on paper and it is where dinner service starts slipping.
- The morning has no slack in it by default. Hair and makeup is the single most common source of delay at a wedding, and every minute lost there arrives at the ceremony. Give the morning loose lengths and a real gap at the end of it.
One timeline, not nine attachments
A wedding involves more independent suppliers than almost any other event of its size, and none of them work for each other. The photographer, the celebrant, the band, the florist and the venue each hold a copy of the plan, and every one of those copies is a snapshot of the moment it was sent.
Then the ceremony moves twenty minutes on the Thursday. You update the document, email it round again, and now some people have Thursday's version and some still have Monday's. Nobody is at fault and the day still goes wrong.
That is the problem 1pm was built for. One live run of show, shared by link, updating on everyone's phone as you edit it, with each supplier seeing only the rows that involve them. No login, no app, no attachment. When you are happy with the timeline above, Copy for 1pm moves it across in a single paste.
Also worth reading: why a run of show was never a spreadsheet job, and the other starting points on the run of show builder.
Common questions
Work backwards from sunset rather than forwards from the morning. For a couple who want portraits in good light, a ceremony two and a half to three hours before sunset leaves room for the ceremony, congratulations, group photographs and portraits without anyone being rushed or shot in the dark. In midsummer that can mean a ceremony at five in the afternoon; in midwinter it can mean one at half past one.
Group photographs take three to four minutes each once you include finding the people in them, which is the part that eats the time. Ten groups is closer to forty minutes than twenty. Couple portraits need thirty minutes to be relaxed and can be done in fifteen if the light is good and the location is close. If the portrait location needs a car, add the travel both ways as its own row.
Enough that a fifteen minute delay does not reach the ceremony. In practice that means loose lengths through the morning and a real gap before the ceremony, because the morning is where delays are born and the ceremony is the one thing that cannot move. Pin the ceremony in this template and the slack in front of it is shown to you as a number, so you can see whether it is thirty minutes or three.
Yes, if you are the planner or the venue. The florist needs to know when the room is free, the band needs to know when they can sound check, and the venue needs to know when the room is being cleared. A guest-facing version can start at the ceremony, but the working version should cover the whole day from first access to vacate.
Everyone working the day: photographer, videographer, celebrant, band or DJ, florist, venue coordinator and the couple. The problem is that the moment you email a PDF to nine people, there are nine versions of the truth and the one that changes on Thursday only reaches some of them. That is the case for a live version rather than an attachment.
Yes. Run sheet is the usual term in Australia and the UK, run of show and wedding day timeline are the usual terms in the United States. The document is identical: items, times, lengths and who is responsible.
On the day, paper is already out of date
1pm shares one wedding timeline with your photographer, celebrant, band and venue in real time. Each of them sees only their own items, on their phone, with no login. Move this one across in about a minute.