“The sweetest happiness is the one we share” – Jacques Delille.
If you’re reading this article, you’re either well advanced into your organization or you’re anticipating a lot. In both cases, it’s a good thing! Once you have selected your wedding suppliers, it will be essential to establish a schedule for your wedding day so that the coordination of all the professionals runs smoothly. In order to prepare this magical day, you must follow several steps to move forward with confidence. Keep in mind one important thing, there is nothing mandatory, so do it your way!
These elements are supposed to guide you and provide you with a basis for the implementation of your wedding day, there is nothing exhaustive or fixed. Discover the precious advice of a Wedding Planner, Farah Casabianca, founder of Première Plume.
1 – Reflect on your day’s highlights
Either you already have a very clear idea of the highlights of your wedding day; or you don’t! It is advisable to follow those steps in order to reassure yourself or to start your reflection. Indeed, it will be interesting to determine the concretization (or not) of the following events:
- Would you like to have your civil wedding on the same day as your party?
- Would you like to have a religious ceremony, if so, will it be held on the same day as the party?
- Will there be a secular / symbolic ceremony at the reception site? If so, it is a good idea to consider a welcome drink to greet your guests before the ceremony. If not, you can start with the cocktail reception.
- The cocktail reception will be followed by dinner and then the party.
2 – Confirm the timings with your providers
This part will be the most time-consuming, in fact, it will be necessary to question your service providers and/or to find in the contracts and emails the useful information in order to determine the hours of presence of each one. Also take the opportunity to ask them about their arrival and departure times. We advise you to give them an idea of the timing according to the points mentioned above. You can base your reflection on the following timings:
- Welcome drink : about 1 hour
- Secular ceremony : between 30min and 1h
- Cocktail : between 1h30 and 2h
- Dinner: 2 hours
3 – Add the specific moments
After the reflection about the highlights and the timings of the service providers, you will have a free mind to concentrate on the specific moments of your day. In particular, the moments of interventions (except ceremony), the musical moments as well as the moments of animations.
The moments of interventions as well as the speeches can be integrated in different parts of your day, if you wish. In particular, during the cocktail / appetizers, or during the dinner. It will then be important to specify an approximate time to define those moments. The ceremony itself is by definition a moment of intervention that must be treated separately.
The musical moments are very important, they can be defined by musical styles / themes with the help of playlists or song lists; but also by very specific songs for special moments like :
- Entrance of the bride during the ceremony
- Exit of the bride and groom after the ceremony
- Entry of the bridesmaids / groomsmen for the dinner
- Entrance of the bride and groom for the dinner
- Opening of the ball
- Cutting of the wedding cake
The moments of animations are optional and can take several forms: games / quizzes set up by the couple’s relatives; magic / dance / circus type performances. Some DJs and entertainers can also play an active role in the animation. You can integrate these moments during the meal for example.
4 – Setting up a coordination
Having one or more people in charge of your day can be decisive. Indeed, although your investment has been very important since the beginning of your organization, it is important to delegate the coordination on D-day.
You will have a lot of things to manage, to think about, and above all, you will have to ENJOY.
This role is very important because the designated person(s) will have to follow the process to the letter but also intervene with the different service providers to make the link between each moment and detail all along. It is therefore essential to choose those people carefully. We advise you to designate 1 or 2 maximum to avoid contradictory decisions or risks of disturbing the providers.
The best solution is to contact a Wedding Planner / Coordinator to accompany you on this day. Indeed, this person will be able to deepen all the reflection and also bring a new and objective look at your organization and the course of your wedding day. This service will also allow you not to solicit your entourage on this mission both engaging but also stressful for people whose main job is not.
Find out about Première Plume Coordination Service :
- Wedding Coordination
For support on your wedding day only.
Find out more