Creating A Timeline for your Event

Ah - The wedding planning timeline, the most exciting part of planning the wedding...

We get this question quite often with clients having questions on how exactly the day should go. So hopefully with this blog post there will be a little bit of information that can help you create a little bit of space in that brain and relax up until the wedding.

When creating a timeline there are 2 crucial points to work around that will make the wedding work accordingly. First it is to work around however many hours you have hired your photographer for, and second is to work around how long you have hired your DJ for. These two vendors are important to work around while planning a wedding because the rest of the vendors will work around them.

We know that a big part of the day is the guest experience and the memories that you get to keep for the big day in photos - since the day goes by quickly we want this to be a great experience for you.

Here are 3 tips to making your perfect wedding timeline

1. Give yourself ROOM for error - I always like to tell my clients that planning for perfection is preparing for chaos. Yes you want things to go perfectly but the reality is a large wedding (anything over 40 people) you have to keep in mind that everything that you do is going to be accounted for - and sometimes things don't always go as planned. Let me provide a few examples. Let's say your ring bearer completely forgets his shoes and he can't go down the aisle and the timeline is running behind. Or your bartender's transmission goes out and has to send someone else and they have never been to the venue, Let's say that someone forgets a specific item for decor at home and you aren't able to display it. First off I want to encourage you that things are going to go wrong - but if you have a coordinator as well as a great plan your guests won't even notice that things went wrong. I always give large increments of time for family photos, toasts, setup and tear down, and of course the first dances.

2. Allow yourself room in your schedule to EAT- believe it or not I have had brides that almost skipped out on eating because they were trying to run the show. Enjoy your wedding, have fun, let your coordinator get you your first meal, and enjoy the moment.

3. Make sure you work WITHIN the times of the DJ and the photographer - These two vendors are the most important when it comes to timeline, if you hire a photographer for only 5 hours and want get ready photos as well as cake photos - you may have to make sure that you are cutting the cake as people are sitting down with their plates so that you have time for your photographer to take the photos. If you want them to get an exit for the wedding but they aren't hired until 11 o clock PM - then you will need a fake exit to be done so that the photographers are able to make sure that they can capture the sparklers or bubbles depending on what you wanted to do.

Keep in mind - no wedding is perfect, you just want it to run smoothly as it possibly can, and the best way to do that is to plan in advance and to have someone behind the scenes for you.