During a wedding reception, the schedule of events and time line you choose can have a massive impact on the “feel” of the wedding. Determining what is most important to you, and then structuring the reception’s schedule accordingly, is an extremely important and challenging task. Hopefully you have a great team of vendors, or even a planner or coordinator, to help you make the right decisions. If not, this advice should at least get you started in the right direction.

First, decide what is most important to you during the reception. Perhaps you want to make sure you are able to visit each table during dinner and greet your family and friends. Maybe it’s really important to you that each of your seven bridesmaids and eight groomsmen have a chance to offer a toast to the bride and groom. Perhaps you want to make sure that your guests have the maximum amount of time possible for dancing. Whatever your fancy, once you’ve decided what is most important, there are certain things you can do with the schedule to accomplish your goals.

The best way to approach these decisions is to put yourself in the place of one of your guests. This will ensure that you don’t make a choice that leaves them confused, unruly, or bored.

Let’s take that first example (wanting to greet each table) as a test case – depending on how many guests you have, this can be a real challenge. If you have more than 150 guests at your wedding, then it’s going to take a minimum of 45 minutes to greet all of the tables (150 guests at 8 people per table is 19 tables, and 2.5 minutes at each table would be 47.5 minutes – and 2.5 minutes per table is moving very quickly). If you have more than 200 guests, it will take at least an hour. What this means is that you have a choice to make – and that choice is whether you want to eat or not. If you eat for 15 minutes and then start to greet tables, by the time you are done the majority of your guests will have finished their dinner at least half an hour beforehand and will incredibly bored – increasing the likelihood that they will leave early. Your best option is to ask your caterer to serve you dinner (or at least a giant plate of appetizers) during cocktail hour. This will tide you over until later in the evening, when you can get some more to eat.

If you are planning on having a lot of toasts (I would say “a lot” is more than four) then you will need to do a little bit of magic with the schedule to make that work. The worst possible thing you could do is to let all of them give their speeches before dinner is served. Toasts and speeches always take longer than expected, and you may have a riot on your hands after 45 minutes of consecutive toasts. Break the people giving toasts into small groups and space them out a little bit. If you’re having a three-course seated meal, have the best man and maid of honor toast before dinner, and two or three people give toasts between courses. This can help pass the time while the catering staff clears plates from the previous course – it’s not ideal (there will be a lot of background noise), but it will keep your guests from becoming unruly. You can also save some toasts or speeches for later in the evening and do them when you cut the cake.

In the case of maximizing dancing time (my personal favorite!), it’s important to “frontload” your schedule a bit and also to place your scheduled formalities in small groups. Frontloading your schedule means doing as much of the formalities as you can before the dancefloor is opened for your guests. This typically includes doing the first dance and toasts immediately after introductions, and doing the parent dances immediately after dinner. The cake cutting and bouquet and garter toss (if you’re doing them) can be packaged together a little later in the evening and done quickly so the dancefloor can be re-opened. The thing to avoid is spacing the formalities out too much – if you have a formal dance and then twenty minutes of open dancing, and then another formal dance, it will make the “flow” of the reception feeling disjointed and weird. Your guests will be confused as to what is happening and, as a result, you’ll have less people on the dancefloor.

Regardless of the strategy you decide on, always make sure you think about your guests. Soliciting advice from your vendors is a great idea as well – email them a copy of your timeline before the wedding and ask them if they have any concerns. Often, this small step can help you avoid a big problem on your wedding day.

~ Evan