Couples pick a ceremony time from a template and then hope the light works out. Reverse it: find the light, then set the time. Everything else on the day can move.
Roughly when the sun sets here
- December and January - around five o'clock. The shortest days of the year.
- March and October - around seven thirty, allowing for the clock change.
- June and July - around nine. The longest evenings you will get.
- September - around seven forty-five, which is why it is the most requested month in the county.
Golden hour is the sixty to ninety minutes before that, and it is the only part of the day that cannot be rescheduled.
Working backwards
Decide when you want portraits in that light. Then subtract: forty-five minutes for the portraits, an hour for cocktails, twenty to thirty minutes for the room turn, and twenty-five minutes for the ceremony itself. That lands your ceremony time.
A June wedding wanting portraits at eight means a ceremony around five. A November wedding wanting the same light needs vows at two thirty, which surprises people every year.
The first look changes the arithmetic
Seeing each other before the ceremony moves most of the portrait work to the morning and buys back the entire cocktail hour. Couples who do it spend the hour with their guests instead of in a field. Couples who do not should build an extra thirty minutes into the gap.
Two other things
Dinner service takes longer than anyone plans - budget ninety minutes for a plated meal at a hundred and fifty guests, not sixty. And leave fifteen minutes of nothing somewhere in the afternoon. It will be used.
See how the rest of the day usually runs on the day page, or generate a twelve-month plan from your own date.