eSigning Wedding Itinerary Made Easy

Digital signature wedding itinerary

hey guys it's Megan with megan ashley creative and welcome back to my channel today we're going to talk about something that came in as a request on instagram and that's how to plan a timeline for your reception so you're in the middle of trying to put a timeline together for your reception and you're not really sure when it starts so we're gonna go over a couple of key points that usually happen to your reception and sort of how to add in other things during the reception time i think yeah so i talked a little bit about this and one of my earlier videos about wedding date timelines but this one we're just gonna really focus on your reception and help you kind of get all the things you want to get done done in a timely fashion maybe you only have your photographer to a certain point and want to try and capture as much as possible so let's start of add in some different ideas on how to do that so the very first one you really need to sort out is when you're gonna eat uh yeah i always see a lot happening before food and i do think it's really important to make sure your guests eat pretty much right away after you enter your reception feeding people might be the most important thing you do especially if you've had a longer wait or a longer day during the wedding people just want to eat food they're hungry and you don't want overly hungry guests so make sure you feed them i look at a good time so if your reception it's gonna start around 6 o'clock maybe trying to eat with about 6:15 is is a great idea get your wedding party together or do your grand entrance and then sort of get to eat it so if you're trying to get a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time due to maybe only having your photographer videographer team to a certain point a really good thing to get done and add the weight as soon as you men to your reception is your first dance i've seen a lot of couples walk into their reception and do their first dance as husband and wife right away and you don't even have to dance to the full song you could could fade it out and do your father daughter and mother so or whatever other important dances you want to do write them in there as well and knock that off your timeline and then you're not waiting till later on in the evening and having your photographer and sit around if you're gonna do it like 10 o'clock at night or something so doing your first dance right away might help you alleviate some time in the timeline down the road and like I said another great way to save some time especially if you and your partner aren't big on dancing in front of people or your spouse isn't or maybe one of your parents isn't able to dance for very long maybe they just alright they're just not comfortable I've seen a lot of people just fade the song out so have a song going for you know 60 seconds and then fade it out into the next dance or I've seen people just get rid of the dance formal dances altogether maybe just the first dance with the two of you is important maybe you don't have parents there or it's just not as important to you you could cut that out as well so you get the food and there's another big one right there if you have the choice between a plated dinner or a buffet-style dinner the plated dinner is always going to go much faster the food gets served right to your guests there's no lineups for the buffet they eat this or the plates get taken away and then you can move right into coffee and dessert almost instantly and it definitely speeds up the flow of your reception if you don't have the option for a plated dinner and buffet styles the way you're gonna go then including other events during dinner time might be a really good idea as well so typically the bride and groom and the head table and their immediate family eat first then therefore they will likely be done eating first so they can move into speeches before everybody else is finished eating if there's still a few people mulling around having seconds eating you could easily move into speeches and start the flow of that and speaking of speeches if you have a bunch of people who want to speak that is great but I would absolutely make sure they have a time line and the way the biggest factor to making sure you stick to your time line reception is having an emcee an emcee oh I love emcees they make my job so easy and they make your wedding so much better they create the flow of your reception and when they're on a tight timeline they're the ones that are gonna get people offstage on stage to dances to dinner fed watered all those things so if you were on a tight timeline for reception make sure you have an emcee if you've hired a DJ sometimes they offer those services as well if you don't have a friend that wants to do it but having an emcee is a great way to help shorten up your timeline for your reception as well so putting a timeline on speeches it's a great idea so after you eat there's a few more items to go if you are on a tight timeline and you have a slide show to do or any presentations to do and you know cake-cutting garter toss bouquet toss at that point you really have to decide what's important to you and what you want photographed if your photography is only there till 8 o'clock and dinner service is at 6:30 you're really not gonna get a lot photographed after dinner service so digging into cake-cutting or any of those other important details you want photographed right away is really really important if you've ever Sagra for they're told midnight you can do whatever you want but this will help you figure out where you want those moments to go and what's priority for you and you're good to do while dinner service is going if you want or dessert service presentations are great to do later on in the evening I don't recommend that you do any sort of stop and start presentation after your dance floor opens once your dance floor opens there's really not a lot that should be going on after that the only two things that I would say you could include in that after the fact is your bouquet and garter toss cos people are already AB people already dancing they're already excited and those are the things you can include but if you have to stop and make everyone sit down to watch a slideshow or a speech or a game a tradition of some kind unless it involves dancing are people being up and around once you open your dance floor don't add on any any other events that'll stall the like stall the flow of your dancing dance floor so if the flow of your reception and your guests experience is really important to you making sure you've hired a great DJ that can get the crowd going or other things that will get people involved so photobooth is a great idea you can totally DIY one of those or hire company those are great because they get emailed right to their right to their phone they can post a social media right away those are super fun to do interactive games with your guests like questionnaires or I've seen treasure hunts things like that any game is also fun candy bars are really fun interactive dessert tables so it's not just a cake cutting you can go and choose a bunch of different little desserts those types of things are always great for a reception make sure those are available to your guests and they're aware that they're there photo booths having your emcee or your DJ or you guys just announcing that it's there it gets people in to the photo booth making sure people understand when they can attack the dessert table is always great and just making sure that people are aware of everything that's going on around them I've seen photo booths go completely unused because they're tucked in the corner whoever was running it or maybe it was DIY people didn't know about it so there's another great reason to have an emcee is they're gonna bug people and bug people and bug people until they go and use that photo booth because you've set it up for a reason you want silly goofy maybe too drunk images of your friends and family so make sure people are aware of some of the activities that you've got going on so the last thing to schedule into reception is whether you're going to do a exit or not so we're gonna do an exit and it's really important for you to have that photographed really make sure that your photographers timeline aligns with that if they're scheduled until 8 you probably aren't gonna do your eggs at at 8 o'clock but if you want that type of photograph tickin and you're like I really want an exit photo people aren't done dinner service by 8 o'clock your photographer's about to leave take everybody outside give them some sparklers do a fake exit if you must and then you have the photo and then you can go on with the rest of your evening your photographers gotten everything that you wanted because you schedule it and you will not be disappointed when he sees your reception photos and you'll be able to remember all those different events so a few things to recap and remember when you're planning your reception is 1 make sure you have a list of things that are priority to you to be photographed and make sure those happen prior to your photographer leaving obviously and if you can't then maybe go back to your photographer and find out how much it would cost to have an extra hour or upgrade your package to include more time your photographer is only going to be able to photograph the things that happens in front of them and while they're there most photographers don't mind the Statham extra 15 minutes but if you have an event that you really want photographed and it's not happening for an hour after your photographers get don't leave please don't expect them to stay the extra hour most photographers will at least notify you that hey it's 8 o'clock all right 7:30 and I'm due to leave at 8 o'clock are you guys okay paying an additional time for me to be here I rarely see photographer just packing up and leaving without notifying you but making sure those lines of communication are open is pretty important and you know you want to make sure you're getting all the images that you discussed sticking to a timeline and really really making sure you get all those photos you want okay so that's some ideas on how to plan out your timeline how to use your time wisely if you like this video please like it below if you just started planning your wedding you're in the middle of planning a wedding or you just like me hit the subscribe button and a little bottle next to it will notify you when new videos are posted and I hope you guys have the most fantastic time UNH I'll see you soon Cheers