The wedding day run sheet: hour by hour

A wedding day runs late. Not sometimes, but nearly always, and usually by about forty minutes by the time dinner is served. The run sheet is not there to stop that; it is there so everybody is late together rather than separately.

A shape that works for an afternoon ceremony

• Morning: hair and make-up start, in the order agreed with the stylist, not by seniority
• Two hours before the ceremony: photographer arrives, getting-ready photographs
• Ninety minutes before: everybody dressed, so there is slack for the thing that goes wrong
• Forty-five minutes before: guests begin arriving, music playing, drinks available
• Fifteen minutes before: guests seated
• The ceremony: usually 20 to 40 minutes
• After: an hour of drinks, canapés and photographs
• Guests seated for dinner, then speeches
• First dance, then the floor opens
• Cake, late food, and the end

Adapt the times, keep the shape. The one thing not to compress is the hour between the ceremony and dinner: it is where the group photographs happen, and it is the single most common place a schedule collapses.

The three places time disappears

Group photographs, moving guests between rooms, and speeches. Each of these reliably takes longer than anybody plans for.

• Group photographs: allow four minutes per group, and give the list to somebody who knows the faces and can shout
• Moving rooms: allow fifteen minutes, always, even if it is one doorway
• Speeches: ask for a time from each speaker and then add half again

Everybody gets the same page

Write it once and send it to the venue, the photographer, the band or DJ, the florist, the officiant and the wedding party. When six suppliers each have their own version of the timings, the day is decided by whoever is loudest at four o'clock.

Put a phone number next to every line, and not yours. The point of the run sheet is that on the day, nobody needs to ask you anything.

The guest version is different

Your guests do not want a minute-by-minute schedule; they want to know when to arrive, when to be seated and roughly when dinner is. Put that short version on the invitation, and keep the detailed one for the people with jobs.

A run sheet does not make the day run on time. It makes everybody late in the same direction, which is the entire trick.

Build in one gap that is not for anything

Fifteen minutes, somewhere after the ceremony, with nothing scheduled in it. Couples who keep that gap use it to stand somewhere quiet together and look at what is happening. Every couple we have asked says it was the part of the day they remember most clearly.