Sample Wedding Itinerary: A Full Day, Already Filled In
A sample wedding itinerary already filled in - ceremony at 3:30pm, reception timed beat by beat, and what moves in the day if the time changes.
You searched for a sample wedding itinerary because you want to see a full day actually filled in, not another empty template to stare at. Here is one: ceremony at 3:30 PM, reception at 6 PM, every row timed the way PlannedBy's own generator lays it out, so you can check it against your own day before building yours.
Why a sample beats a blank template
A blank template asks you to invent forty row times from nothing, in an order you are also guessing at. A sample shows you what a finished day actually looks like, so the job becomes adjusting times rather than inventing a structure first. The same document also splits by role - one column for the couple, one each for the photographer, celebrant, florist, caterer, DJ or band, and transport - so every supplier reads only their own rows instead of the whole day. A photographer scanning fourteen rows meant for a florist is exactly the kind of friction a shared itinerary is supposed to remove, and it is the first thing that goes wrong when a couple hands out one long printed page instead of a filtered one.
Most searches for a sample land on a photo of someone else's printed page, which answers almost nothing: you cannot copy their times, and a screenshot cannot adjust to your ceremony. What follows is a real, usable one instead - the actual rows, in order, from a ceremony time you can change.
The sample, start to finish
This is the classic PlannedBy shape: a single ceremony, a single reception, no second venue. Every reception row below is the product's own template, not an estimate.
| Time | Moment |
|---|---|
| 3:30 PM | Ceremony |
| 3:45 PM | Cocktail hour begins |
| 6:00 PM | Couple introduced |
| 6:30 PM | Entree served |
| 7:00 PM | Speeches |
| 7:30 PM | Dinner served |
| 7:45 PM | Golden hour photos |
| 8:30 PM | Cake cutting |
| 8:45 PM | First dance |
| 9:00 PM | Dessert served |
| 9:15 PM | Dance bracket opens |
| 10:45 PM | Last drinks called |
| 11:00 PM | Send off |
| 11:15 PM | Pack-down |
The gap between ceremony and cocktail hour runs 60 to 90 minutes in most published advice, which is where family photos and guest travel both happen before anyone sits down.1 Every row from Couple Introduced onward is the same twenty-row block PlannedBy ships as its classic reception, run from 6 PM to 11 PM with a pack-down row fifteen minutes after send-off.
What moves if your ceremony starts earlier or later
This sample is not fixed to 3:30 PM. PlannedBy's generator places dinner, speeches and the first dance at set offsets after the reception starts, and the send-off never moves earlier than those offsets allow - it is the one row the day protects. Push the ceremony back and cocktail hour, dinner and the dance bracket all slide with it; pull it forward and the same thing happens in reverse. Typing one new time at the top recomputes every row below it, which is the entire difference between this sample and a spreadsheet copy of it.
A second real sample, for comparison
This is not the only sample worth looking at. An Australian wedding coordinator's own published run sheet builds the same shape around a 4 PM ceremony and a 6 PM reception, with the same instinct behind it: a ceremony set too early misses the light a photographer needs.2 Both samples land on a 6 PM reception from different ceremony times, which is less a coincidence than a sign that the shape holds across more than one wedding, built by two different methods and arriving at the same place.
That second sample is also a useful check on your own numbers. If your ceremony is earlier than 3:30 PM, expect your reception to land earlier than 6 PM too, by roughly the same gap shown here - the relationship between the two times holds steady even when the exact clock times move.
Who this sample itinerary is not for
If your day has two venues, a ceremony and reception split across the afternoon with a long gap between, or an elopement with no reception at all, this single-block sample will not match your shape and stretching it to fit will cost you more time than starting from the right template. Build from a scenario meant for that structure instead of bending this one.
FAQ
Is this sample itinerary the same for every wedding? No. It is one real shape - a single ceremony followed by a single reception - timed from PlannedBy's classic template. A split day or a weekend wedding needs a different scenario.
How much gap should I leave between the ceremony and the reception? Most published advice puts cocktail hour at 60 to 90 minutes, which covers family photos and guest travel without leaving anyone standing around for longer than that.1
Can the reception run shorter than five hours? Yes, and the send-off still lands at the end. PlannedBy's generator keeps the send-off fixed and drops the beats in between - dinner, speeches, first dance - if a shorter night runs out of room for all of them.
Does every supplier need the full itinerary? No. The same document filters down to one column per role, so a photographer sees their own rows and a DJ sees theirs, not the other nine columns of the day.
What if my ceremony time is still not confirmed? Build the sample anyway with your best guess. Because every row downstream is computed from that one time, changing it later re-times the whole day instead of requiring a rewrite.