Ceremony time in invitation? The exact time or earlier?

[Zoe Nguyen]

Hello All, I'm new to the forum. We would like to have our ceremony starts at 6pm exactly (my arrival). Should I put the invite the ceremony time at 5.30 pm since we will play guests seating song 20 mins prior to my arrival? What time did you put in your invite? There are also few things in our case that bother me: 1. Our wedding ceremony location is quite hards to get to (lots of steps). 2. For most of our guests, that will be first time visit for them to the island. 3. Most guests (including my FI) will stay 20-40mins away from the site depending in traffic, and traffic at that time can be bad. 4. I will rent a room from 12pm at the cermony site to get ready so the chance of being late more than 20-30mins is quite slim. Thank you muchly. :-)

[Trace2013]

Hi Zoe!

Welcome and congrats on your engagement. I was also concerned about this and created a fun wedding day timeline on the back of my invite that told guests to arrive at the beach at 3:45 for our 4:00 ceremony. I thought it was a cute, but important reminder for them that we plan to start immediately at 4:00. Same for the reception, since its in a different part of the hotel I asked them to start making their way down 15 minutes in advance of dinner service. This way we hope most everyone will be there and we can get things going fairly quickly.

[Zoe Nguyen]

Thanks Trace2013, I haven't thought about the wedding timeline, that's such a great idea, because we will have passport invites. I will have a look into it. Would you mind to share yours (you can PM me)? 

[Trace2013]

No problem, I didn't want to go to all the trouble of a passport invite (too lazy!) so I just did a two-sided invitation. The timeline was on the back... Here it is:

[Zoe Nguyen]

Thanks Trace2013, much appreciated. I think I will copy and change the color. 

[alpwedding2013]

Great detailed timeline, I love it! 

[llincks]

Wonderful job!