As you get closer to your wedding day, did you know that you need to have a wedding day timeline? Having a wedding day timeline helps your wedding day go by as smoothly as possible, so why not set your special day up for success with a well thought-out timeline! Since Rich & Kitch got married in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, we also put together a destination wedding week schedule. If you are having outside events surrounding your wedding day, a wedding week/weekend schedule is super helpful for your wedding guests to have so they know when & where they need to be. When it comes to coordinating everything that goes into your wedding day & week, timing is everything, so let's dive into our Rich & Kitch tips to help you get hitched!
WEDDING DAY TIMELINE TIPS
While your wedding day timeline has a lot of details, your wedding planner/day-of wedding coordinator and/or wedding photographer should help you put it together. These vendors have created timelines for many weddings and know how things should flow throughout your wedding day. However, you will have some say into how the timeline goes, so don’t worry!
The whole point of a wedding day timeline is to make sure that everything you want gets accomplished on your wedding day. You will only have certain vendors for certain amounts of time, so you need to make sure everything is in place to get all of the important moments captured.
It will be your job, your partner's job, and your wedding party & key family member’s jobs to follow your timeline as closely as possible on your wedding day. Your wedding planner & wedding photographer will also be guiding you throughout your wedding day to make sure you stay on track. However, running behind can throw things off schedule and potentially annoy you, your vendors, & guests, which isn't fun for anyone! We know that unexpected events can happen on your wedding day, but always remember to stay positive & try to follow your timeline as best as you can!
In regards to your wedding day timeline, it’s not like you are checking your watch every minute because there literally isn’t time for that lol! However, you do want an idea of where to be & when to be there throughout your wedding day.
Some of the most useful pieces of wedding stationery I designed were our wedding day timelines & destination wedding week schedules. YOU can access Rich & Kitch's wedding stationery templates for a super affordable price HERE & if you join our Wedding Planning Playbook, you'll get access to our wedding day timeline & schedule templates for FREE!
A huge benefit of using the Rich & Kitch wedding day timeline template is that it allows you to give a nice looking copy of your timeline to everyone that has a role to play on your wedding day, and they can help to make sure you are on track with timing.
A day-of wedding timeline is extremely important for you, your wedding party, & key family members to follow so your wedding day goes by as smoothly & as stress-free as possible. So even if you don't use our template, it will be super important for you to work with your wedding planner and/or wedding photographer to craft a timeline to follow on your wedding day.
While it might be stressful to put this elaborate timeline together, it really minimizes stress on your wedding day which is the goal of course, so it is totally worth it. With that, I’m going to walk you through our wedding day timeline. Our photographer & wedding planner helped us pick the exact times, since they knew how long most things took, so the times are important to reference. I also added to our timeline & made it in a pretty format so our wedding party & key family members all had a copy of it, with a color-coded schedule for them to follow, of course!
PRE-WEDDING DAY TIMELINE
The first part of our wedding day timeline starts with your pre-wedding festivities (aka the getting ready part). If you are paying to get your hair & makeup done, and have a lot of bridesmaids getting their hair & makeup done, you’ll need to start the getting ready session at a good time. We had lunch delivered for the bridesmaids and the groomsmen, so that is on this part of the timeline. We also included notes about when things like flowers were getting delivered and when our vendors were arriving to setup.
WEDDING CEREMONY TIMELINE
While we chose not to have wedding programs printed since we didn’t have a lot of wedding guests, we did include these ceremony details on our wedding day timeline. This was helpful so everyone knew the order they were walking in! Another bonus of purchasing our wedding day timeline template is that it includes this wedding ceremony template. It can be used as a wedding program if you want to print this page separately!
WEDDING RECEPTION TIMELINE
The last part of the wedding day timeline includes all the reception details. Important details here include:
When your cocktail hour & reception will start
What time dinner will be served
When toasts & speeches will be made
When dances will happen
When you will cut the cake
When the dance floor opens
What time late night snacks will be served if you are having those
What time the last call will be if your venue has a curfew
And times for when your photographer & videographer will leave
All wedding attendees are together at this point on your wedding day, so your wedding planner or day-of wedding coordinator will make sure this part of your schedule is going according to plan. Your photographer will also be guiding you and grab you for additional photo opportunities like sunset photos if there is a good sunset! It’s also helpful to know when your main vendors will be leaving to make sure they capture all the special moments you want documented on your wedding day! This allows you to give your wedding vendors a tip before they leave your wedding day, too!
DESTINATION WEDDING WEEK SCHEDULE
The last timeline included in our template pack is our destination wedding week schedule. This is a great item to share with your wedding guests if you are having multiple events, so they know when & where they need to be throughout your wedding week! Wedding week timeline schedules are a fun thing to add to your welcome bags, too. We did this for our wedding & it was a huge hit! For our destination wedding in Cabo, we hosted a welcome dinner, sunset sail, and rehearsal dinner for everyone, so this schedule included when & where to meet each day to make it to the events. Our wedding guests enjoyed being included in our destination wedding week excursions, so if you have the budget to do something extra, we definitely recommend it! We also had our events at night, so our wedding guests were free to do whatever they wanted during the day. They appreciated this, too, since they did all inclusive and it gave them freedom to make a vacation out of our destination wedding week in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico! Even if you are having a local wedding, if you are having a welcome party or rehearsal dinner for everyone, or maybe a post-wedding brunch, a wedding weekend schedule is helpful for people to have, too.
WEDDING DAY TIMELINE & DESTINATION WEDDING WEEK SCHEDULES
If you are interested in using our wedding stationery templates, they can be customized in the format of your choice (PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Adobe Illustrator or Canva), allowing you to add in details specific to your wedding & update the fonts/colors as needed! As we work on timelines for our clients' weddings, I like to start them in an excel file so it is easy to move things around before every detail is finalized! That’s our #RichAndKitch bonus tip for creating your wedding day timeline using our templates!
I spent more time designing & perfecting these templates than I care to admit lol, but the feedback we got from our wedding guests made it all worth it, since our wedding guests & wedding party found them super helpful. A detailed timeline is key & it is super important to share this with everyone that needs to have it! Our wedding day timelines may be similar or not, but almost every wedding day timeline is unique depending on your vendors, venues, and everything else, so make sure you take time to customize these templates! These are 5x7 templates and can even be printed on your home printer using 5x7 card stock, or you can get them printed on a site like Vistaprint.
Lastly, if you want something more personalized, check out our custom itinerary design package here!
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