What time should hair and makeup start? When should everyone be dressed? How much time do you really need for photos? When should guests arrive? Is 4:30 PM too late for a ceremony? When should dinner start? And how quickly can you get everyone onto the dance floor? If you’ve never planned a wedding before, figuring out exactly how an entire wedding day should flow can feel like a lot. Luckily, we’ve seen a few wedding days around here.
At The Pines, our wedding rentals run from 9:00 AM to midnight, giving you 15 hours to get ready, get married, celebrate, and make some pretty incredible memories. And after midnight, you’ll have until 1:00 AM to gather your personal belongings before heading out for the night. While no two weddings at The Pines are exactly alike, there is a flow we’ve seen work really, really well. So instead of handing you a blank timeline and saying, “Good luck!” – let’s walk through what a wedding day at The Pines can actually look like.
The doors open at 9:00 AM, and just like that, it’s officially wedding day. This is when the wedding party can begin arriving, bringing in personal items, getting settled into the getting-ready spaces, and starting hair and makeup. And our biggest advice for the morning? Don’t rush it. You have a long, exciting day ahead of you. Give yourself time to eat breakfast, turn on your wedding morning playlist, pour the mimosas, get ready with your favorite people, and actually enjoy this part of the day. Exactly when hair and makeup should begin will depend on the size of your wedding party and your beauty team’s recommendations. If you have a larger group getting services done, don’t be surprised if they recommend getting started right at 9:00 AM.
By afternoon, wedding mornings at The Pines usually start getting a little busier. Your photographer and other vendors may begin arriving, flowers are showing up, details are being photographed, and everyone is starting to transition from getting ready to getting wedding ready. Your photographer will be one of your best resources when determining this portion of your timeline. They’ll help you decide when everyone needs to be dressed based on your photo list, whether you’re doing a first look, and how many photos you’d like to accomplish before the ceremony. This is also why we don’t recommend trying to plan every single minute of your morning yourself. Your venue, photographer, hair and makeup team, DJ, caterer, and other vendors all know how much time they need to do their jobs well. Use them!
If you’re doing a first look, this portion of the afternoon will often be filled with photos. Your first look might be followed by couple portraits, wedding party photos, immediate family photos, or any combination your photographer recommends. One of the biggest advantages of doing photos before the ceremony is getting more of them checked off your list before guests arrive. That means after the ceremony, you may be able to spend more time actually enjoying social hour with your guests. Not doing a first look? No problem. Your photographer will simply structure your photo timeline differently and save more of those photos for after the ceremony.
Around this time, guests will begin arriving, finding parking, walking into the venue, greeting friends and family, and finding their seats. Meanwhile, it’s time for the wedding party to disappear! Ideally, photos are wrapped up and everyone participating in the ceremony has a little breathing room before it’s time to line up. Grab some water. Touch up your makeup. Use the restroom. Take a minute with your wedding party, and maybe have that oh my gosh, we’re actually getting married moment. You don’t want to finish your last photo at 4:28 and immediately walk down the aisle.
If you ask us what ceremony time tends to work really well for a wedding at The Pines, 4:30 PM is our sweet spot. It gives you plenty of time to enjoy the morning and get photos done without pushing dinner – and more importantly, the party – too late into the evening. When ceremony time approaches, your Pines Venue Manager will help get your wedding party lined up and ready to go. Then it’s time to get married! Of course, ceremonies vary in length, but once you walk back down that aisle together, it’s officially time to celebrate.
You did it! While your guests head to the bar, grab a drink, and mingle, you may have a few remaining photos to finish up. Social hour also gives us an important transition period behind the scenes. The ceremony is over, guests are mingling, vendors are preparing for dinner, and we’re getting everything ready for the reception. This this is where having the right amount of time matters – too short, and everything feels rushed…too long, and guests start wondering when they’re going to eat. For a typical Pines wedding with a 4:30 PM ceremony, this brings us right around to…
Let’s get this party started. Around 5:45 PM, we love seeing the grand entrance begin. Your guests have had time to grab a drink and socialize, you’ve had time to finish photos, and now everyone can make their way to their seats and get ready to welcome the newlyweds. Whether you’re introducing the entire wedding party or just the two of you, this is a great way to officially transition from social hour into the reception. And we like to keep things moving from here.
Right after the grand entrance, it’s time to eat! A 6:00 PM dinner works beautifully with a 4:30 PM ceremony and 5:45 PM grand entrance. Your guests aren’t waiting around wondering what’s happening next, and dinner is early enough that the rest of the evening can keep moving toward the part everyone has been waiting for: The dance floor.
Rather than choosing an exact minute for speeches months in advance, we usually like to let dinner service guide us. Once everyone has been served, speeches can begin. That way, guests aren’t waiting to eat while someone gives a toast, and we’re not interrupting the flow of dinner service. Depending on how many people are speaking and how long dinner takes, your exact timing may vary – and that’s okay. A wedding timeline should guide your day, not make you panic because something happened seven minutes later than planned.
Once dinner and speeches wrap up, we’re getting very close to party time. We often see first dances beginning sometime in the 7:00 PM hour. This may include your first dance as newlyweds, father-daughter dance, mother-son dance, or any other special dances you’ve planned. Some couples also choose to include cake cutting or other traditions around this point in the evening. The goal is to keep these moments flowing naturally so there isn’t a long lull between dinner and dancing. Because at 7:30…
This is when The Pines team typically begins making the table switches needed to open things up for the big party. Tables are adjusted, the dance floor gets some breathing room, your DJ turns things up, and your guests can officially hit the dance floor. And from here? Your timeline gets a whole lot simpler.
Dance.
Grab a drink.
Take some photos.
Eat some dessert.
Dance some more.
Sneak outside for sunset photos.
Find Grandma and get her on the dance floor.
Enjoy the night you spent all this time planning.
This is exactly why we like a timeline that gets you onto the dance floor around 7:30 PM. You still have four and a half hours left to celebrate! When dinner or formalities get pushed later and later, one of the first things that gets shortened is your actual reception. And if having a packed dance floor and a fun party is important to you, we want to protect that time. Getting the formal portions of the evening wrapped up earlier means you and your guests have plenty of time to simply enjoy yourselves.
All good things must come to an end. At midnight, your wedding celebration at The Pines officially wraps up. Cue the last dance, final hugs, and the inevitable how did that go by so fast?! But don’t worry — you don’t need to have every personal item out the door at midnight.
After the celebration ends, you have until 1:00 AM to gather your personal belongings. You’ll want to make sure you’ve designated people ahead of time to help collect décor, gifts, cards, personal items, and anything else that needs to leave with you. Because after a 15-hour wedding day, trust us: you do not want to be figuring out who is taking the card box home at 12:37 AM. Have a plan, assign a few helpers, grab your things, and head off to wherever the night takes you next.
Not necessarily! Every wedding at The Pines is different. Maybe you’re skipping the first look. Maybe you have a larger wedding party that needs more photo time. Maybe your ceremony is only 15 minutes long. Maybe you’re planning several speeches. Maybe you want your first dance immediately after your grand entrance. Maybe sunset photos are incredibly important to you. Your wedding timeline should be built around your wedding.
But you also don’t need to build it from scratch. We’ve watched hundreds of wedding days unfold at The Pines. We know where couples tend to need more time, where things can get rushed, and what helps the day transition smoothly from getting ready → ceremony → social hour → dinner → dancing.
So when you’re staring at a blank timeline wondering how you’re supposed to turn 9:00 AM to midnight into the best wedding day ever…Don’t worry. We’ll help you craft it — so you don’t have to.