Wedding Reception Timeline

The design of the wedding reception timeline is a question that every bride struggles with as they decide which venue to book!

So just how long should your special one-of-a-kind day be? The answer to that depends on what you have planned for your guests. I’m not here to review your perfect wedding reception timeline, that is best done by my friends at The Knot here.

The key to any successful wedding reception is to always end on a high note.

Let’s review the basic 4 hour wedding reception timeline setup.

1. Cocktail hour.

2. Introduction, toast, speeches, dinner sometimes spilling into…

3. First dances, bouquet, garter, special dances, cake cutting.

4. Dancing!

Here is the grey area of wedding planning. I’ve seen some parts of the country say you can wrap a wedding up in 4 hours. Those sound like boring parts of the country lol. Seriously folks, what I mean is, that’s fine for a dry wedding with no alcohol. But from a DJ’s perspective you will need two, yes at least 2 hours of quality dancing time for your guests to sweat and cool down too, IF you will be serving alcohol. Keep in mind alot of venues don’t do last call or shots for weddings. So having an after party destination isn’t a bad idea instead of a last call.

There are other factors to question in your planning, Will the size of your bridal party be your guests motivations?  Are your families the partying type? Are there any hall sound ordinance or time restrictions?

To summarize the magic recommended number of hours for your perfect wedding reception is 5. Five hours is the magic number!

Any shorter may feel like you left something out, any longer you risk half your guests sliding out to leave you running out the clock with your bridal party reenacting the Baby Got Back video.

Leave them wanting more, do an encore, and then send them on to create their own after party. I mean may as well, everyone is already dressed up anyway! You will find more wedding reception timeline tips here!