A typical UK wedding day timeline

A typical UK wedding day starts with hair and make-up in the morning and builds out from the ceremony. Guests arrive half an hour before it. After the ceremony comes a drinks reception of about 90 minutes, when the group photos are taken, then the meal, the speeches and a break while the room is reset. Evening guests arrive about five hours after the ceremony, followed by the cake, the first dance and evening food, with music until around midnight.

Build your own version from your ceremony time with the wedding day timeline builder. It is free, needs no account and works out every row for you.

The figures on this page come from that builder, and its block lengths are this site’s working assumptions, not survey results. Every one of them can be changed in the builder’s Assumptions panel.

What time do weddings usually start?

There is no single answer, so it helps to look at what each start time does to the rest of the day. The ceremony is the anchor. Everything after it moves with it, and so does the morning, because hair, make-up and the photographer’s arrival are counted backwards from it.

• An earlier ceremony, such as 1pm, puts the meal in mid-afternoon and gives a long evening. Hair and make-up for four people with one artist would start at 08:45.
• A 2pm ceremony moves the meal to 16:30 and the evening guests to 19:00, an hour later than the 1pm day on every row.
• A 3pm ceremony gives a slower morning but a shorter evening, with evening food at 22:15 and the meal not served until 17:30.

Church weddings have a fixed window. The Church of England says that whatever day you choose, “the wedding ceremony must take place between 8am and 6pm.”

A typical wedding timeline, block by block

Most of a UK wedding day is a sequence of fixed blocks, and the builder uses these lengths by default:

• Guests arrive 30 minutes before the ceremony.
• Ceremony: 30 minutes for a civil or humanist ceremony, 45 for Church of England, 60 for a Catholic wedding with Mass.
• Confetti and congratulations: 15 minutes.
• Drinks reception: 90 minutes, with group photos starting 10 minutes in and couple portraits straight after them.
• Guests called to their seats 15 minutes before the meal, which takes 90 minutes for three courses.
• Speeches: three of 10 minutes each, after the meal.
• Room turnaround: 30 minutes, then the evening guests arrive.
• Cake 30 minutes into the evening, first dance 15 minutes after that, evening food 90 minutes after the dance.

A civil ceremony must include vows. GOV.UK says “You must exchange vows if you’re getting married” and that “You must have at least 2 witnesses at the ceremony”, so the 30 minutes covers the legal part and a reading or two, not a long service.

Sample wedding timelines for 1pm, 2pm and 3pm ceremonies

These three were made in the builder with the ceremony time changed and every other setting left at its default: a civil ceremony at the same venue as the reception, three courses, three speeches after the meal, evening guests on and a midnight finish. Each heading links to that result in the builder, so you can open it and change it.

The builder raised no warnings for any of the three. With a midnight finish, the 3pm day still leaves 105 minutes between evening food and the end.

The 2pm ceremony in more detail

A wedding day timeline for a 2pm ceremony in the UK sits between the other two. The photographer arrives at 11:45, an hour before you are dressed and ready at 12:45. Group photos run from 14:55 to 15:25, with portraits until 15:45 and half an hour left of the drinks. Speeches end at 18:30, and the evening starts at 19:00.

What changes a wedding day schedule in the UK

A few choices move whole blocks of the day, and the builder handles each one:

• A church service. Choosing Church of England adds 15 minutes to the ceremony, which pushes everything after it back.
• Two venues. If the ceremony and reception are in different places, the builder adds the travel time between them before the drinks start.
• Speeches before the meal. The meal starts later and the evening keeps its time; the wedding speeches guide sets out what each order does.
• The light. Add a date and a town, and sunset and golden hour appear in the timeline. In winter the sun can set before the group photos are finished, and the builder warns you when it does. The golden hour guide has the times for each month.
• No evening guests. Switch them off and the cake and first dance follow straight on from the room turnaround.

The clocks change matters too. GOV.UK says that in the UK “the clocks go forward 1 hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March, and back 1 hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October”, so sunset on an October wedding a week after the change is about an hour earlier on the clock than the week before.

A wedding day timetable template you can edit

The builder is the template. Change any input and every row moves with it, then copy the link to send the same timetable to your venue, your photographer or whoever is running the day. The link holds your settings, so nothing is stored anywhere else. You can also copy the timetable as plain text for an email, or print it on one page.

For the venue, the rows that matter most are guests called to seats, meal served, speeches and the evening arrival, because those are the points where the kitchen and the bar change what they are doing.