How Long Will Our Wedding Ceremony Take?

 
A wedding ceremony can take anywhere from a minute (literally - that's to get the legal bits done and dusted), to "how long is a piece of string".

If the weddings you are most familiar with are those on TV, you will probably expect that the ceremony will last 7 minutes. That's the typical run time for a TV wedding and it is driven by commercial breaks, not ceremony content.

On the other hand, if your experience of weddings is mostly church weddings, you might be expecting around an hour, or longer

For a civil ceremony, with no sponsors to worry about, and no set liturgy to comply with, the choice is entirely yours.  And it comes down to a couple of things:
  • The legal part of the ceremony, that is, what the Marriage Act requires, is literally ONE MINUTE. And if that's all you want, consider my Married in a Minute package
  • How many guests. The fewer the guests the shorter the ceremony generally as the guests know you very well so it is not necessary to go into as much detail about your relationship as it might be where larger numbers of people who don't know you as well are present
  • Whether you're going to have a formal walk in (processional) and formal walk out (recessional). They take time
  • How long your vows are, and whether you are saying the personal promises part of your vows in unison or one after the other
  • Whether you choose to include readings and/or rituals in your ceremony and how long those are
  • How much laughter there is! (And there is always laughter in my ceremonies) because obviously, when people are laughing we stop talking.
  • How long your photographer takes over photos of the signing.
So how long your ceremony will take will be an individual thing entirely up to you.  But one word of advice. A boring ceremony always feels twice as long at least as it actually is.

When couples come to me and say words like "short and sweet" when I ask them what they want for their ceremony, and I ask them the second question (why?) invariably it comes out that all the weddings they've been to have been unutterably boring. And then I explain that that's not going happen for their wedding. And also that when the guests are engaged in the ceremony and enjoying it it will feel half as long as it actually is, so we don't want to go too short.  For most people that means something around 20-30 minutes. But I always say, plan for 45 minutes elapsed time from when the music starts for the walk down the aisle to when you're moving amongs your guests and accepting congratulations. That way no-one is going to feel rushed. But warn your photographer about that. Nothing worse than having to ask your celebrant to ask your guests to hold their congratulations until the reception because you are hurrying off to have photos taken.
more information about Wedding Ceremonies
more information about Getting Married
more information on Types of Wedding Ceremonies
more information about Wedding Ceremony Packages
printable Summary of  Wedding Ceremony Packages
more information on The Structure of a Wedding Ceremony
more information about the Codes of Practice and Ethics I abide by