Free WEDDING TIMELINE BUILDER | Personalised NSW Wedding Run Sheet

How It Works

1. Answer a few quick questions — your reception style, ceremony time (or let us recommend one), guest count, venue type, and food service.
2. Tell us what matters most to you — a packed dancefloor, plenty of photos, or time to actually catch up with your guests. The tool weights your reception time accordingly.
3. Pick your traditions — first dance, speeches, cake cutting, bouquet toss, grand entrance, games — tick only what you're actually doing.
4. Get your personalised run sheet — a full timeline with realistic durations for every part of the day, plus notes on anything worth double-checking with your venue or vendors.

What Makes This Timeline Different

• Built on real Australian wedding run sheets, not generic templates — course lengths, cocktail hour duration, and speech timing are all based on how NSW weddings actually run.
• Smart pacing, not just a schedule — speeches overlap with meal courses instead of pausing the room, cake cutting flows straight into the first dance, and golden hour photos happen during dinner rather than stealing time from the night.
• Respects real-world constraints — venue noise curfews, typical NSW reception windows (5–10pm in cooler months, 6–11pm in warmer months), and a 9pm cutoff for mains all factor into the schedule.
• Flexible for however you're doing it — skip the first dance, skip the cake, do a single-course banquet-style menu, or lock in a fixed reception start and finish time if your venue requires it.
• Accounts for nerves, not just logistics — anxious about your speech or the first dance? Move it earlier in the night without disrupting the rest of the flow.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a wedding reception be? Most NSW wedding receptions run around 5 hours from when the reception itself starts (after cocktail hour) to the end of the night. Combined with a typical 60–90 minute cocktail hour, that puts most receptions in the 6–7 hour range including cocktail hour, not counting the ceremony.

What time should a wedding ceremony start? Most NSW ceremonies start between 2pm and 3pm, with 4pm or 5pm ceremonies more common in summer to avoid the afternoon heat. The right time also depends on working backwards from your reception's start time and cocktail hour length.

How long should wedding speeches be? Plan for around 5 minutes per speech, plus a 10-minute buffer per speech session to allow for people running over. Four or fewer speeches usually run as one block; five or more are better split across two points in the meal.

What time should the main course be served? Aim to have mains on the table by 9pm at the latest — most NSW receptions serve mains somewhere between 6:30pm and 8pm.

Do we need a first dance or cake cutting? No — plenty of couples skip one or both these days. If you're doing both, they typically happen back-to-back with little to no gap in between, right after the last speech.

When should we do golden hour photos? If your ceremony and reception are on the same day, golden hour often happens during a meal course rather than as a separate pause — the two of you slip out for 15–20 minutes while guests are eating, then come straight back. This is the hour before sunset, when the light looks "golden", and varies by locaiton and time of the year. 

Does our venue's noise curfew affect the timeline? Yes — most NSW venues cut music by 10 or 11pm. This tool builds your reception length around that, so you're not left with a timeline that runs past when the music actually has to stop.

Is this run sheet accurate for other states, or DIY weddings? The defaults are based on typical NSW timings, but every duration is fully editable, and you can lock in your own ceremony time, reception start/finish, or exact course lengths if your venue already has these confirmed.