Wedding Itinerary Example for Couples Curating a Multi-day Wedding Timeline

• Plan the Perfect Wedding Weekend with Our Sample Timeline & Tips
• Multi-day Wedding Timeline Tips
• Keep Your Wedding Itinerary Template Flexible for Guests
• Flexibility Within Your Wedding Day Timeline
• Don't Overstuff the Itinerary
• Publish Your Wedding Reception Timeline Early
• Give the Entire Event a Theme or Personal Touch
• Be Mindful of Your Wedding Budget
• Sample Wedding Itinerary for a Multi-day Event
• 1st Day - Welcome Party & Rehearsal
• Day 2 - Wedding Date
• Day 3 - Recovery Brunch & Farewell
• Start Your Wedding Planning Adventure Today!

Multi-day Wedding Timeline Tips

We've collated a few expert tips you should bookmark when planning a wedding weekend timeline.

Keep Your Wedding Itinerary Template Flexible for Guests

Your many wedding guests live many different lives away from your big day. A life full of various commitments and activities they're willing to put on hold for your wedding day. This openness to be with you should be reflected in the timeline for your wedding day, especially if it's taking place over a long weekend away.

From the moment guests are informed of your plans, you should emphasize the fact that your timeline is flexible. That loved ones are not obliged, or expected, to attend any event on or around the day of your wedding. Because maybe they simply don't have the time or resources to be present for every activity.

The RSVP on your wedding website is a great place to gauge guest availability early on, and will help you better plan your various timelines, knowing exactly who's able to attend certain days, or events. When you publish your completed timeline for the weekend, be sure to also make it clear which events are 'optional'. After parties, farewell brunches, and cocktail parties outside wedding reception time, should all be considered extras that guests are not obliged to attend.

Flexibility Within Your Wedding Day Timeline

Your openness to the guest experience should also extend to the timeline itself, and how strict you are with timings. Guests should feel like the entire event is managed, and that there is a steady flow of activities planned. But they shouldn't feel like they're on a bootcamp, corralled from one experience to the next. Forced away from catching up with family during cocktail hour to move onto the reception, or to witness the cake cutting, just because that's what the strict schedule dictates.

Build buffers into your schedule specifically to allow guests the freedom to enjoy certain experiences. Parts of the day/s when you know loved ones will desire a few extra minutes to chat or go wash up before the next tabled event. You may not need these buffers on the day, and that's why we encourage you to be flexible. Creating a reception timeline that evolves with the vibe of the celebration.

Don't Overstuff the Itinerary

We have always taken a 'less is more' approach to being a wedding planner. Forever preferring one less scheduled event in favor of more time spent enjoying the day. After all, the majority of your wedding party may not have seen each other for some time, and would likely relish the chance to catch up. Don't deny them that opportunity by stuffing your schedule with too many things, especially when planning a multi-day event.

Downtime is critical during weekend weddings, as guests will become socially fatigued if not given enough time to rest. Which is why we'd suggest scheduling as many optional events as possible, and even timetabling excursions or activities guests can take part in away from the group. Even if that means simply spending a couple of hours sunbathing by the pool!

Publish Your Wedding Reception Timeline Early

Whether you're marrying abroad, or planning an event locally, guests deserve to know your plans well ahead of time. To ensure they are thoroughly prepared for every aspect of your big day. They need to know what types of outfits to pack, whether they need to book travel in advance, and whether their accommodation is located near enough to each activity. Logistical stuff that may not be the most exciting thing to consider, but can make or break a guests' experience.

Publishing your wedding itinerary on your wedding website is the fastest and easiest way for most guests to receive your information. But we'd also suggest including a less detailed version within your wedding invitation suite, and perhaps in welcome bags. Just to ensure loved ones are never far from essential information.

Create your multi-day itinerary

Give the Entire Event a Theme or Personal Touch

It's relatively easy to keep the vibe of a wedding day feeling consistent when you only have a wedding ceremony and reception to plan. But a celebration taking place over a series of days can often be harder to tie together. Becoming disjointed rather than coherent.

The easiest way to curate a wedding weekend with a harmonious feel, is to give the entire celebration a theme. Build your timeline around said theme and offer specific activities related to it. If you're planning a destination wedding, this is easily done by embracing the local culture and hosting entertainment and workshops related to it. But weddings closer to home can also be given a distinctive feel that ties each day together.

A festival vibe is one of our favorite wedding themes right now, and it lends itself perfectly to the structure of a multi-day event. We bet your bridesmaids would love the opportunity to get dressed up in hippie gear, and have their hair and makeup done like it's the 70s all over again!

If you can't see yourself throwing a festival wedding, or a festive wedding! Perhaps instead consider what makes you both tick. What are your shared passions? What are your relationship highlights? Where are you both at your happiest? Let these ideas inspire your theme.

Bring your unique personality to every event, and you'll find the entire celebration has a more profound meaning.

Be Mindful of Your Wedding Budget

Weddings are expensive, whether they take place over one day, two days or they're a week-long affair. And the longer the celebration is, the more costly the wedding typically ends up being. Which is one of the reasons why couples so often get married abroad, lured by the opportunity to spend more time with loved ones, at a lower cost.

Whether you're planning a destination wedding or not, we'd recommend prioritizing the wedding day itself when working out your budget, and subsequent timeline. Don't get distracted by the allure of a fancy rehearsal dinner, or planning a grand farewell brunch. Concentrate your funds, and your energy on why everyone is with you in the first place, your wedding.

Our free wedding budget builder and itinerary creator are endlessly useful tools for helping you stay on track in every sense of the word. Making it super straightforward to sensibly plan your budget in tandem with the order of events.

Sample Wedding Itinerary for a Multi-day Event

To inspire your long weekend wedding plans, we've put together a sample wedding timeline for a 3-day event. Just to give you an idea of how your celebration outline might look.

1st Day - Welcome Party & Rehearsal

From the moment guests arrive at your wedding venue, accommodation or celebration space, we want them to feel welcome and at ease. Free to catch up with friends, involve themselves in activities or relax in private.

2pm - Guest Arrivals

Family and friends arrive at the hotel or agreed location, and are presented with a welcome bag containing information about the next few days, along with some sweet treats!

3/4pm - Welcome Drinks

Once everyone has settled in, invite them to enjoy some welcome drinks with the rest of the wedding party. Ensure that this invite is optional, and point out that drinks will be available until the rehearsal/welcome dinner. Just so guests don't feel like they need to arrive at 3pm and stay all afternoon.

5pm - Ceremony Rehearsal

Gather the bridal party and rehearse the processional, recessional, and key moments of your ceremony. Your officiant should guide this rehearsal and help you all understand your roles.

6:30pm - Rejoin the Welcome Drinks

The majority of guests should have arrived by this point, and got settled into their accommodation. Join them for a couple of cocktails, canapés, and music at your welcome party.

7:30pm - Rehearsal/Welcome Dinner

Keep the fun, welcoming atmosphere rolling with a relaxed dinner for invited guests. This can be arranged exclusively for close friends and family, or broadened out to include any attending the wedding. Just be sure to recommend or even book somewhere for non invited guests to go to that's local to where they're staying.

9pm - After Party

Drinks following your rehearsal dinner should be strictly optional, but encouraged. Just don't go crazy the night before your wedding....!

Day 2 - Wedding Date

It's the big day! Time to make your grand entrance as the bride and groom.

7am - Breakfast

Whether you choose to dine alone or with your bridal party, it's important to eat a healthy breakfast that'll keep you satisfied into the afternoon. If you know you'll be too nervous to eat, prepare healthy snacks you can pick at as you get ready.

8am - Getting Ready

Give yourself adequate time to get ready without feeling like you're being rushed. Be sure to ask your hair and makeup artists how long the entire process will take before setting a start time. Arrange for your wedding photographer to join you halfway through your preparations to capture the mood of the morning.

12:30/1pm - First Look & Portraits

We've found that getting as many shot list items captured as possible before the ceremony is a great way to free up time later on in the day. Your first look should, of course, take place before the ceremony. But there's no reason why family portraits can't be done shortly after.

3pm - Ceremony

Be sure to request that guests arrive 15/30 minutes before the actual ceremony start time, to allow loved ones to mingle and find their seats. A typical wedding ceremony lasts around 30-45 minutes.

4pm - Cocktail Hour

Serve cocktails that match the style of your celebration, along with canapés and live music, if possible. We love a string quartet, but if you prefer something more casual, then someone playing an acoustic guitar works equally well.

5/5:30pm - Dinner Reception

Guests are invited to enter the reception area and find their seats. Typically the happy couple would then make their grand entrance and perform the first dance. We prefer the various dances to actually occur post-dinner and speeches, but the order of events is very much up to you.

We have put below our recommended order of reception events;

• Grand entrance of happy couple and bridal party
• Toasts
• Dinner Service
• First Dance
• Parent Dances
• Cake Cutting

11pm - Last Dance

Complete the evening with either a romantic last moment on the dance floor, or perhaps a routine performed by your bridesmaids! Before exiting the building via a receiving line of guests holding sparklers aloft - or however you choose to finish the celebrations! Just make sure your photographer has been briefed on your grand plans!

11:30 - After Party

If you're keen to keep the party going, be sure to book somewhere for you and the other night owls to go onto. Maybe say goodnight to the photographer at this point!

Day 3 - Recovery Brunch & Farewell

9am - Brunch

Arrange for a casual buffet to be served the morning after your wedding, but don't schedule it too early! Give guests time to get up slowly and feel ready to socialize again.

10:30am - Farewell Toast to Guests

Prepare a few words to say to loved ones before they depart, but also feel free to speak from the heart about the last couple of days.

1pm - Guests Leave

Make sure there is transportation arranged to take guests to the airport or train station (if applicable)

1:05pm - Disappear Off On Your Honeymoon!

You've spent months planning your dream wedding, and you celebrated with your favorite people in the world. But now it's time to take yourselves away, and start enjoying married life.

Start Your Wedding Planning Adventure Today!

Now you've got an idea of how a multi-day wedding itinerary should be planned, we think it's time you put what you learned into practice, and created your own timeline! Our wedding timeline builder is available to you absolutely free as part of our suite of professional event planning tools.

Discover today just how easy it is to build your own wedding itinerary with our free tool. Within minutes, you'll have mapped out the major parts of your big day, and you'll soon be working out the best time to schedule your wedding portraits and arrival times! And once your itinerary is complete, it can be instantly exported in either PDF or spreadsheet format. Ready to be sent to any vendor or member of your wedding team that needs it.

Build your wedding timeline today, and uncover how our intuitive free tool will revolutionize your planning experience.