Timings for your Wedding Day

Timing is everything with a wedding to keep the flow of the day. It always surprises me that some venue co ordinators aren't that great at advising couples about time for their day. They tell them to have the ceremony whenever they want and they often want to finish the wedding breakfast as soon as they can to let staff go home. Its your day and food, ceremony, dancing should be when you want them.
I think it's really important that you think about the time of year that you are having your wedding and then work backwards from the end of night. With light Summer evenings you really don't want to start the dancing off too soon, as what happens all of your guests come in and watch the first dance, then head outside again to enjoy the lovely evenings. I wouldn't recommend starting the dancing til about 8.30pm at the earliest.
Based on this you want to finish the wedding breakfast and speeches at about 7.30pm so there is an hour for evening guests to arrive and for you to meet them and for the venue to clear tables. The wedding breakfast, including speeches takes bout 2.5 hours so ideally a sit down at bout 5pm is perfect. With that in mind and the drinks reception taking about 1.5 hours you'd be looking at having a civil ceremony either 2.30pm or 3pm.
If you are having a religious ceremony you need to allow 30 minutes or so after your ceremony for photos and then transfer time to the venue, so 1.30pm or 2pm is a good time.
Weddings that are out of season, say Autumn or Winter weddings then I always think it can be quite nice to get married slightly later so that the wedding breakfast becomes more of an evening meal and then the dancing follows.
What I think you need to try and avoid however, when you do your timings is having a big gap between the wedding breakfast and the evening reception as it breaks up the flow, an hour between is perfect. We are always happy to advise our clients as much as we can regarding the timings for there day, so do feel free to aks us any questions. Timing is everything.

Louise Perry - One Foot in the Groove/EC Wedding Design