How to Build a Wedding Weekend Itinerary

Your Basic Wedding Schedule Template

You’ll want to include your welcome event, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, entire wedding day, and farewell brunch in your wedding schedule. While a lengthy to-do list might seem daunting, tight planning will save you from a lot of stress on the day. Here’s how to break down each event into its own time block.

The Welcome Event

• Out-of-town guest arrivals
• Guest transportation from the hotel or airport to the welcome event venue
• Welcome event
• Guest transportation back to the accommodation

Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner

• Rehearsal, including who’s attending and when they need to arrive
• Transportation from rehearsal to the rehearsal dinner venue
• Rehearsal dinner, broken down into planned activities such as speeches, gift exchanges, etc.
• Transportation from the rehearsal dinner to accommodation for guests who need it

Wedding Day

• The bride and groom arrive to start getting ready, and necessary items like your rings and wedding dress are checked/accounted for
• The groomsmen and bridal party arrive at the agreed-upon location for hair, makeup, and other preparations
• Vendors begin to arrive
• Pre-wedding photography, inclusive of first look
• Guests enter to mingle and get settled
• Ceremony begins
• Cocktail hour
• Family photos while guests are otherwise engaged; you can make this go more smoothly by providing your photographer with a desired shot list
• Reception* begins (party time!) with grand entrance and first dance
• Welcome speech
• Dinner service
• Toasts (it’s helpful to find out in advance how many people are planning to say a few words)
• Parent dances
• The dance floor opens to guests
• Cake cutting
• Last dance OR after party

*It’s well worth your while to plan out the reception timeline, too. Not only is this helpful for your catering team, but it also means you can plan to work with your makeup team for touchups before you start taking photos, if that’s important to you.

Farewell Brunch

• Guests invited to the farewell brunch arrive at the brunch venue
• Farewell brunch commences
• Guests depart to go their own ways
• Couple departs on honeymoon

“Don’t start your brunch too early if you can avoid it,” Ford says. “A lot of couples think, ‘Oh, next day, 9 or 10,’ but if you’re partying till midnight or people are going to an after-party till 2 in the morning, start that a little bit later. A brunch, in my opinion, can start as late as about 1 o’clock if you need it to.”

Important Factors to Remember as You Create a Wedding Itinerary

As you build out your wedding timeline using our wedding weekend itinerary template, ask yourself the following questions so you don’t miss anything important:

• Are you hosting just a rehearsal and wedding, or a welcome party, rehearsal dinner, wedding, and brunch?
  Adjust the above wedding itinerary template as needed.

• Are you holding a destination wedding?
  If so, build in travel buffers in case something goes wrong, someone’s flight is delayed, etc.

• Are any of the events outdoors?
  Think about weather-related backup plans and include them in your timeline.

• Will you have multiple venues?
  If everything isn’t at the same venue, make that clear on your itinerary to avoid confusion among guests. Also, indicate whether you’ll be providing transportation between venues, such as a shuttle service.“You also want to consider that different people have different preferences,” Ford says. “So be able to say, ‘We’re gonna have our welcome party from 6 to 10, but come at 6 and we’ll have transportation to get you back at 8 o’clock, at 9 o’clock, or at 10 o’clock.”

• Do you have a hard venue curfew or noise ordinances at your wedding venue? Note them so guests are in the know.

Don’t Forget That These Factors Will Impact Your Timeline, Too

Don’t forget to build flexibility into your wedding timeline. Various factors might be out of your control that could derail your entire plan if you forget about them.

Consider:

• Your venue’s staffing hours
• Your photographer and videographers’ contracted hours; coordinating family portraits and group photos can be more time-consuming than you’d expect!
• Weather backups
• Transportation, shuttle needs, and planned pick-up/drop-off hours

“Transportation as a whole is just one of those things that people don’t put a lot of thought into unless they’re hiring a professional,” Ford says. “It’s really important that you’re considering where guests are staying, where the events are, and how long it takes to get back and forth.”

Wedding Weekend Itinerary Ideas | Do’s and Don’t’s

Do:

• Host more events, like welcome parties and farewell brunches, if your guests are traveling long distances to celebrate your big day.
  As Ford says, “‘The welcome party is kind of a thank you to say, ‘We appreciate you coming out. We appreciate you traveling, and we want to take care of you more than just the night of the wedding.’”

• Replace a welcome party with a casual “meet at the hotel bar” open window if that’s more your style.

Don’t:

• Plan events for which you can’t provide transportation.
• Plan events that will conflict with your venue’s cutoff times.

Furthermore, build buffer time into your schedule, beyond even travel time. For example, calculate how long the event itself will take, add on the travel time, and then add on an additional 15 to 30-minute buffer.

Wedding Day Itinerary Troubleshooting

Create Your Perfect Timeline in Seven Easy Steps

1. Decide if you need to create a timeline for two or three days.
2. Understand your fixed constraints, such as venue curfews, vendor hours, etc.
3. Build a timeline around your main events, including standard durations for each.
4. Layer in the time necessary for logistics, such as transportation.
5. Create two versions of your itinerary, one for guests and one for vendors (and maybe your own timeline that combines both).
6. Cross-check your timeline with a wedding coordinator checklist to see if you’ve missed anything.
7. Publish the guest-facing timeline on your website, and distribute it via email to the wedding party and immediate family members, to ensure everyone’s on the same page. Distribute the vendor-facing timeline to all relevant vendors.“The website becomes the home base for details,” Ford says. “It allows us to have changes in real time that people can go online and see.”

FAQs About Your Wedding Timeline Template

What Should Be Included in a Wedding Weekend Itinerary?

Absolutely all the details surrounding your wedding weekend should be included in the itinerary, whether the guest or vendor version. This includes when guests arrive in town, the wedding welcome party, getting ready with hair and makeup artists, when vendors arrive, when guests enter the venue, the ceremony, wedding party portraits, the reception, getting the party started, and any other planned activities for the night. Don’t forget to include the farewell brunch the next day!

How Long Should a Welcome Party Be?

A welcome party can be quite short, just 90 minutes or so. There’s no need to stretch it out, especially if you have family members traveling from out of town who may feel rushed and tired. Give them ample time to relax before all the fun of your big day.

Do We Need a Welcome Party for a Destination Wedding?

Yes, it’s customary to hold a welcome party for a destination wedding, since your loved ones have likely spent a lot of time and money to be present at your wedding. The welcome party is a time to greet guests and show appreciation.

How Long are Weddings and Receptions Typically?

The wedding and reception generally take at least five hours. This doesn’t include time for the wedding party to get fully dressed and ready, or any pre-wedding activities such as a first look photo shoot. As such, plan to spend the entire day focused on your wedding.

How Do We Share the Wedding Itinerary with Guests?

Put your wedding itinerary on your wedding website and share it via email as well. While guests without wedding-related duties may not need a full itinerary and may be fine with the ceremony and reception times on the invitations, all of your wedding party and family members should receive one.

Make Sure Your Wedding Runs Perfectly

With a little thorough planning, clear communication with your vendors and wedding party, and our wedding timeline template above, you can ensure that your wedding date goes off without a hitch.

You’ll still need one other thing, though, to ensure your wedding is protected from any potential chaos: wedding insurance. Wedding cancellation and liability insurance protects your deposits and covers any unforeseen additional expenses. Get your BriteCo wedding insurance quote now.

With liability coverage starting at $102 and cancellation coverage starting at $80, BriteCo provides cost-effective solutions for comprehensive wedding protection.

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