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.