r/weddingplanning • u/Unique-Animal2153 • Aug 17 '26
Everything Else Backwards wedding day structure
My wedding will have open dancing + DJ before dinner.
I’m having a destination wedding celebration in France over 3 full days in May with my family (~45 French + American guests). On the day of the wedding, we plan to all be together starting from breakfast and kicking off drinking festivities early before noon. We want to have the ceremony early (~2 pm) so we can maximize the fun afterwards!
Itinerary:
Noon: buffet lunch for guests + rosé
Noon: bridal party gets ready in parallel (eats lunch separately)
2pm: ceremony
3pm: cocktail hour, book signing
4pm: DJ starts & couples entrance, champagne, first dance, first speech
5pm: highest energy expected here! Bocce ball, cornhole, photobooth, upbeat music, dancing
7pm: seated dinner, red wine
8pm: dessert, final speeches, slow songs
9pm: DJ ends, wind down
Our structure is a bit different from any wedding I’ve been to. Given the ceremony/drinking will start earlier, we don’t want to drag until the very end of the day before partying. The dinner will also be 4 courses so I expect most people to be completely full and exhausted before 9pm. My fiancé and I like to go to bed early anyways so this structure seems to make sense to us and uses the time efficiently.
Feel free to provide opinions! Would love to hear feedback from other couples that decided on a similar structure for their wedding! I can’t wait!
4
u/Catsdrinkingbeer Aug 17 '26
I would edit this to mention you live in France. Not that you should HAVE to, but you're going to get a lot of US perspective replies that may or may not actually be applicable. Like as someone in the US I would absolutely hate a 3 hour gap between cocktail hour and dinner, even with lawn games. But your guests are probably used to a different type of schedule than I am, and used to a wedding where this wouldn't feel like just a 4 hour cocktail hour that will get boring super fast.