What is the best time to get married?

There are lots of things to consider when choosing the best time for your wedding ceremony, and lots of factors will influence your choice. Ultimately it is your choice, so take this advice with a pinch of salt, but hopefully it will help you think through the many possibilities.

Registrar / Church availability

One of the biggest influences on your choice of wedding time is availability of the church, or registrars. There are always more weddings on a popular summer Saturday than there are registrars or churches to go around. So, our number one piece of advice is to get in early with the booking of the church or registrar to avoid losing out on the time you want.

Early weddings

Weddings pre midday are rare but do happen. The upside can be longer hours of daylight if your chosen date is outside the main summer months; also there is less time for guests to get sneaky drinks at the pub; less time for thiomgs like flowers to wilt and it can be a bit cooler for the wedding ceremony if it is a really hot day.

Late weddings

A wedding at 4pm or later, takes a lot of pressure off, when getting ready for your wedding. You will have a lot more time for everything. This also applies to guests, who may be travelling or have a large group to co-ordinate. It also means you can be much more certain that your guests have eaten, thereby reducing the potential catering needed to keep everyone contented.

How hungry are guests

As above, in late weddings - giving guests enough time to guarantee they have mostly had lunch can save you providing quite so much. Weddings at 2pm or later are likely to mean that your guests had a chance to eat lunch. This might mean that you don’t feel the need to provide Canapés for example. If your wedding ceremony is at 12:30pm it is then likely that guests probably didn’t have a chance for lunch, so Canapés might be a better idea in this case.