Wedding day itineraries are just fluffy things that event planners pretend are important, right? Wrong! If you don’t have your itinerary written out the day of your wedding, it’s going to make the entire process a lot more difficult and complicated to manage – so why not make it easy on yourself and plan out your wedding day itinerary from when you wake up, to when you go to bed?
I’m serious when I say that you need to plan exactly what’s happening on your wedding day, down to the minute, so that you can easily share it with anyone that may be helping you on the day. Not only that, but when you’re sitting there getting your hair done, or trying to tie your tie, you’ll know exactly what’s coming next so you won’t feel any unnecessary stress or anxiety. Win-win, right?
As an event planner with over a decade of experience, I have come to LOVE day-of run sheets. That’s fancy event planner speak for itineraries. If I’m being honest I think I always loved them! Run sheets give you a detailed overview of the entire event from start to finish. They’re easy to hand out to anyone at your wedding who needs to know what’s happening and when (your MC, your onsite venue coordinator, your caterer, your DJ, your band, your mother-in-law) AND BONUS, instead of people coming up to you to ask questions, you can just tell them to look at their itineraries!
It’s a golden stress-free magical piece of paper that just makes everything SO MUCH BETTER. On your itinerary you’re going to list things like where certain people or items need to be at specific times, for example – at 9:00 a.m. the bride needs to be out of the shower and in the car on the way to the salon, or at 6:00 p.m. the photographer arrives, the best man hands the photographer the shot list and set of stationary to be photographed.
Let’s get into why you should have a super detailed wedding itinerary!
- It will be easier for other people to help you.
- If something needs to shift in the schedule it will be easy to see what else will be affected so you can make quick decisions
- Your wedding day itinerary may shift as you get closer to the day, that’s normal
Now that you know why it’s so important to have a wedding itinerary, I’m going to share how to do a wedding itinerary for your own wedding!
Start by creating a document, and add a table with three columns. Column 1 is the time, column 2 is the activity, column 3 is notes. Column 1 is pretty self explanatory, you’ll list the time (i.e. 8:35 a.m.) that the activity is going to take place. Column 2 is the activity, so that could be travelling to the venue, or mothers of the couple get ready, or get knife and server from the back room to cut the cake. In column 3 you’ll note down anything important such as the person responsible for the thing happening, or you may write down the specific amounts to pay your vendors – this is where you get more detailed.
Instead of trying to write the whole thing out in order, start with the main activities of the day such as “ceremony” and “farewell” because you already know what times those things are going to happen. Then you can fill in the smaller details around the larger activities. You may even find that you don’t have enough time to do a certain thing, and that something will have to shift in order to accommodate it. That’s very good information to have well in advance of your wedding day because it may require you to adjust vendors’ arrival and departure times, and they’ll want to know those details as early as possible – some may even require it in order to book them.
Keep in mind that this document will keep evolving as you get closer to the day. On the day of your wedding, make sure you have at least 10 printed so that you can share them out to whoever needs them!
It is incredibly important to have a well thought out wedding itinerary far in advance of your wedding day, so that everything flows smoothly, and so that you don’t have to stress about when the next thing is going to happen.
If you found this episode useful I’d be so grateful if you followed and shared this episode with a friend, or your fiance! If you have questions about creating a wedding itinerary I’d be happy to share what I know to help, drop me an email at [email protected]! I’ll be back next Thursday with another wedding planning episode, so until then keep it joyful!
And, if you are in the market for a wedding planner, look no further! We’ve got a variety of services and price points to fit your unique wedding’s budget. Book a call to learn how we can help you plan you wedding joyfully!
00:01 Intro
01:06 Why you should have a wedding itinerary
03:19 What goes on a wedding itinerary
04:24 How to create a wedding itinerary
07:45 Wrap up