Why False Start Times are a Bad Idea for Weddings

In last week's post, we talked about using a false start time to ensure that guests arrive on time for the wedding rehearsal. If your friends and family are notorious for their tardiness, you may think that doing the same for the wedding day would be equally as useful. However, using a false start time for the actual ceremony can actually cause problems on wedding day.

Wedding venues typically give a limited amount of time for setup before the ceremony. Every minute of that time is valuable to your wedding vendors, such as the florist setting up decor and your wedding coordinator, responsible for setup, distributing corsages, pinning boutonnieres, and giving instructions to participants and vendors. 

So, let's do a little sample calculation. Let's say the ceremony is actually supposed to start at 3:30 p.m., and the church allows vendors to access the space to start setup no more than an hour ahead. Punctual guests typically start arriving up to 30 minutes ahead. So, with guests trickling in at 3:00 p.m., that would allow the vendors about 30 minutes of setup time before anyone arrives, still a tight timeline but manageable.

But then let's say you decide to put a false start time on the invitation of 3:00 p.m. to ensure your tardy guests actually show up on time. That means your timely guests will likely start to arrive around 2:30 p.m., exactly when vendors are permitted to start setup in the space. Instead of arriving to a lovely decorated ceremony space, the guests arrive to see setup in progress.

Not only does giving a false start time create a time crunch for your vendors but it also perpetuates the myth that weddings do not start on time! All of those guests that actually arrived at the stated time will be left waiting around for possibly a full hour until the real start time. Since they don't know that the time given was actually a false start time, they will just assume the wedding started late. Such waiting around creates an unpleasant experience for punctual guests and may reflect badly on you because they will mistakenly think you've kept them waiting!

There will always be a few stragglers that sneak in late to a ceremony. But telling guests the true time will maintain a smooth flow for your wedding and ensure a more pleasant experience for all of your guests.