Bridal Party Run Sheet: Who Is Where, and by When
A bridal party run sheet gives every person in the wedding party one row: where to be, by when, and who is waiting on them. Eight rows, built around the morning.
Four people are getting ready in one room and two of them are due somewhere else by quarter past two. A bridal party run sheet is the day written for those people rather than for the suppliers: one row per person, the time they have to be somewhere, and the name of whoever cannot start until they get there.
Copy the eight rows below, or open a day that is already timed in the run sheet generator and give each person their own copy of it.
What goes on a bridal party run sheet
Everyone else on the document is either a guest or a supplier. The wedding party is both at once. They are getting ready themselves while three other people wait on them, and nobody in the group is being paid to watch a clock.
So this version is a call sheet rather than a schedule. Eight rows, each with a name against it.
| Row | Who it names | When it happens |
|---|---|---|
| Getting ready starts | Everyone in that room | Ceremony minus 4 hours |
| Dressed and photographed | Anyone in the morning photos | Before the cars, not with them |
| Cars leave | Every person travelling | Ceremony minus 45 minutes |
| Guests arrive | Nobody in the party | Ceremony minus 30 minutes |
| Ceremony | Everyone standing up front | The ceremony time |
| Family and party photos | The named groupings | Ceremony plus 30 minutes |
| Reception entrance | Whoever is being introduced | Ceremony plus 3 hours |
| Speeches | Whoever is speaking | Given two weeks out |
Five of those eight times are offsets rather than decisions, and they place themselves once the ceremony time is set. For a 3:00 PM ceremony the morning reads 11:00 AM, 2:15 PM, 2:30 PM and 3:00 PM, photographs at 3:30 PM, and the reception entrance at 6:00 PM.
The morning is four hours long, and the last 45 minutes of it are spent travelling.
Why the morning is the part that slips
Every other block of the day has a supplier holding its clock. The celebrant runs the ceremony, the caterer runs dinner, the band runs the floor. The morning has hair and makeup, and in the shipped day that column has something to do in 11 rows, the fewest of the nine supplier columns; the photographer's column has 23.
Once the chairs are packed away, the people keeping the morning on time are the people getting ready in it. That is the case for handing this group their own rows instead of a copy of everybody's.
Hair and makeup is the thinnest supplier column in the day, at 11 rows.
When does the photographer actually arrive?
Australian wedding photographers put standard coverage at eight hours, sometimes stretching to ten, with a full day at ten to twelve and short coverage of the ceremony and portraits at three to four.1 The document is longer than any of those: getting ready at 11:00 AM through to a send-off at 11:00 PM is twelve hours.
So eight hours of coverage sits somewhere inside twelve, and where it sits decides whether the morning is photographed at all. Booked from 11:00 AM, the camera leaves at 7:00 PM, part way through the reception. Booked to 11:00 PM, it arrives at 3:00 PM, after everything the wedding party spent the morning on.
Either answer works as long as the sheet says which, because it changes what the morning is for. If the party is getting ready in two locations, only one of them has a photographer in it before the ceremony, and the row should name which one. The photographer run sheet template is the same day filtered down to their rows.
The same eight hours of coverage, placed at either end of a twelve hour day.
Type the ceremony time and read the morning back The run sheet generator places getting ready, the cars, guest arrival and the photo block off one time, so the only part left to write in is the names.
The three handovers
Into the room, 11:00 AM. Somebody has to let the hair and makeup team in and tell them the order of chairs. Put that person's name on the first row rather than assuming it falls to whoever is least busy.
Out the door, 2:15 PM. The cars leave 45 minutes before the ceremony and the first guests arrive 15 minutes after that. The wedding party is on the road while guests are parking, so anything still in the room at 2:15 stays there for the night. Name a person for the rings, a person for the vows, and a person for the bag that goes on to the reception.
Out of the photographs, 3:30 PM. Family and party photos start half an hour after the ceremony. Guests spend that stretch on canapes, and a Melbourne caterer puts the arrival window at 45 minutes at the shortest and two hours at the longest before the main meal.2 The wedding party spends the front of that window in photographs, so if anyone in the group needs food or a chair, it goes on the row.
A morning wedding moves every call time
The shipped morning wedding sheet opens at 5:45 AM and the two venue sheet at 6:45 AM, against 11:00 AM for a 3:00 PM afternoon ceremony. Two hours in a chair at 6:00 AM is a different ask from the same two hours at midday, and the wedding party is who absorbs it.
The two venue day also breaks in the middle: 18 rows covering 11:30 AM to 4:45 PM between the morning ceremony and the evening reception. Guests take five hours off. The wedding party gets travel, a change of clothes and photographs in that gap, which is why those rows need names on them more than any others.
First row on the sheet, by the shape of the day.
Who gets a copy, and when
Jordan, founder and lead wedding coordinator at Managing Matrimony, sends the finished run sheet to every paid supplier plus the MC, the bridal party, the parents and one trusted family member as a backup point of contact, shipped as a PDF to print and a live link for last-minute edits.3
Send it about two weeks out, and send the link rather than the file. Ceremony times move, and when one does, every printed copy in the room is wrong at the same moment. On the paid side, DIY is a single payment for the wedding rather than a monthly charge. See pricing.
Common questions
What is a bridal party run sheet? The wedding day schedule cut down to the rows the wedding party has to act on, with a name and a time against each one.
How is it different from the couple's run sheet? Same day and fewer rows, with the morning in more detail. The Australian wedding run sheet template is the full day it comes from.
Who writes it? Whoever is building the run sheet. If there is a coordinator, they will ask for these names anyway, and arriving with them filled in saves a meeting.
Should the speech order go on it? Yes, with each speaker's position in the order, sent early enough that nobody is writing at the table.
What if the party is getting ready in two locations? Two rows for every shared moment, one per location, with the travel time between them written in. The photographer can only be in one of them at 11:00 AM.
Do we still need one with a coordinator? Yes. A coordinator holds the suppliers to the day, and what a day of coordinator does starts when they arrive, which is usually after the morning is already underway.
The one thing to do today
Write a name against the three handovers: who lets the morning suppliers in, who travels in which car at 2:15 PM, and who is standing in the 3:30 PM photographs. Everything else on this page derives from the ceremony time, and the run sheet generator does that part for you alongside the rest of the free tools. The full day these rows are lifted out of is the wedding run sheet template.