Timeline Genius vs PlannedBy: One Day, Hour by Hour

Timeline Genius vs PlannedBy is settled by one wedding day rather than by a feature list: put the same day into both and see which one still holds together when the ceremony moves. This page makes no claim about Timeline Genius, because no verified record of what it ships or charges sits in front of me, and a guessed one would be worse than an honest blank. What follows is the day PlannedBy already ships, from 5:45 AM to the send-off, with an independent Australian figure set against each hour so you can hold anything else to the same day.

The day at a glance

Every clock time below is a real row in a run sheet that ships inside PlannedBy, sitting next to a number published by someone who works Australian weddings for a living.

Before anyone else arrives

The morning wedding that ships in PlannedBy opens at 5:45 AM and runs to 4:00 PM across 52 rows. The two-venue day opens at 6:45 AM and closes at 11:00 PM across 62 rows. Call the long one sixteen and a quarter hours of written day.

Set that against what anybody is actually booked for. Australian wedding photographers answering the same reader question on Easy Weddings put standard on-the-day coverage at 8 hours, sometimes stretching to 10, with ceremony-and-portraits jobs as short as 3 or 4.¹ The booked block is about half the written day, and the unbooked half is where the small things live: the hair and makeup order, who is holding the rings, what time the cars leave.

Open a new wedding in any tool and read the first row it hands you. If the day starts at the ceremony, every hour before it is yours to build from nothing.

The two-venue day that ships in PlannedBy, against a standard block of photography coverage.

The ceremony is short, and everything is measured from it

Six Australian celebrants answering one question put a civil ceremony at 20 to 30 minutes, with the outer range across their answers running from 15 minutes to an hour.² AMC, an Australian celebrant body, gives 15 to 30 minutes and bands it by type: 10 to 15 minutes for legals only, 20 to 30 for a personalised civil ceremony, 30 to 45 or more for something elaborate.³

So the shortest block on the sheet is also the most tightly agreed one, and every other hour of the day is placed relative to it. In PlannedBy the back half of the night derives rather than being typed. Leave the finish time blank and the day ends 300 minutes, five hours, after the reception starts, with dinner placed 45 minutes past the entrance, speeches at 90 and the first dance at 150.

Change the ceremony time in any tool and read the last row of the day rather than the first. A finish time that stayed where it was tells you the tool is storing your times instead of working them out.

Where Australian celebrants put a civil ceremony, inside the wider range they also name.

The window between the ceremony and dinner

Writing for a United States audience, Zola puts a cocktail hour at 60 minutes and 90 at the outside.⁴ A Melbourne caterer bounds the same window from both ends: under 45 minutes feels rushed once guests have to move between spaces, and over 2 hours leaves them hungry and tired before the main meal.⁵ The workable window is therefore 45 minutes to two hours, and the American hour sits comfortably inside it.

This is also the stretch where two suppliers read the same hour completely differently. The caterer is timing canapes; the photographer is somewhere else with the couple and the light. One run sheet carries nine columns, and a row only reaches a supplier's view when that supplier's column has something written in it.

The window before dinner, as an Australian caterer bounds it at both ends.

Put in a ceremony time and read the whole day back The run sheet generator builds getting ready, the ceremony, the reception and the send-off out of one field, with every row on a real clock.

7:00 PM, the block that runs over

Speeches start at 7:00 PM on the shipped afternoon sheet: three speakers, five minutes each, with the MC holding the clock. The sheet carries its own warning a row earlier, that three unwatched speeches become a 45 minute block and a cold main.

Published advice agrees on the shape. Easy Weddings recommends 3 to 5 minutes per speech.⁶ Bridebook's Australian edition recommends the whole speech segment wraps up inside 20 to 30 minutes and never runs past 40.⁷ Fifteen minutes of speaking is the plan, and 45 minutes is what the sheet expects when nobody is holding the clock.

Mains go out at 7:30 PM with 45 minutes allowed from the first plate to the last one cleared. One Australian wedding DJ budgets 30 to 45 minutes for dinner service.⁸ A speech block that runs half an hour long therefore does not simply finish late, it finishes on top of the kitchen.

The speech block as the shipped sheet plans it, and as the same sheet warns it goes.

11:00 PM, and the block that gets dropped

The floor opens at 9:15 PM and stays open until 10:45 PM. Last drinks are called at 10:45, the bar closes at 11:00, and 11:00 is the send-off. That is ninety minutes of dancing. The same Australian DJ asks for at least 90 to 120 minutes of it at the end of the reception, so the shipped night sits on the bottom edge of that band.⁸ An hour trimmed off the venue booking comes out of the floor before it comes out of anything else.

PlannedBy handles a short night by dropping beats rather than squeezing all of them. A beat that would land after your finish time is dropped, and the send-off is kept whatever else goes. That is a decision the tool makes for you, and it is worth knowing which decision any tool makes here: set a four-hour reception, then look at which block disappeared. A schedule that keeps every block and shortens each one has been built by arithmetic rather than by anyone who has run a night. There is more on how long a reception should actually run if that is the number you are still arguing about.

Ninety minutes of open floor on the shipped sheet, against what an Australian DJ asks for.

Where this page stops short

Two limits, both of them mine.

Nothing above describes Timeline Genius, which makes this half a comparison on purpose. Their own site is the place to read the other half, and it is the only place I would trust for a current price or feature list.

PlannedBy is also built around the run sheet and the day it describes, with seating, guests, suppliers and the budget arranged around that. A planning business that needs contracts, invoicing and lead capture is shopping in a different category of software, and the day-of schedule is worth comparing separately from the back office.

Common questions

Why does this page not put the two products in a feature table? Because half of it would be invented. Feature sets and prices move through the year, and a comparison table with one wrong row costs a reader more than it gives them.

Is PlannedBy a Timeline Genius alternative? For building the day-of run sheet and getting it into your suppliers' hands, it is built for exactly that. For any other job, compare on the day you are actually planning rather than on the category name.

Does it work for coordinators as well as couples? Yes. Couples pay once for their own wedding, and planner plans run several weddings at a time with seats for a team, billed monthly. Charges localise by country, so the pricing page is the only accurate place to read your own figure.

Do I need to know my ceremony time before I start? That one field is enough to get a full day back, with the reception, the derived beats inside it and the send-off already placed. Everything after that is editing rather than building.

What happens if my venue only gives me four hours? The beats that would fall past your finish time come out, and the send-off stays. On the shipped afternoon sheet that means the late dancing goes first, because it is the block sitting closest to the end.

Can I look at it before deciding anything? Yes. The run sheet generator and the seat planner are open on the site, and the generator will build a full day out of a single ceremony time.

The next decision

Pick the day you are actually planning, not a demo day. Open the run sheet generator, put in your real ceremony time, and read the send-off it gives you back. Then put the same time into whatever else you are considering, and compare two real days row by row instead of two feature lists. Whichever one you keep, the run sheet is the document your suppliers will be reading at 6:45 in the morning.