Wedding Run Sheet Australia: Hour by Hour for 3pm and 5pm Ceremonies

A wedding run sheet is the minute-by-minute document that tells everyone working on the day, hair and makeup, photographer, MC, venue staff, what's happening and when. A typical Australian wedding day runs about twelve hours, from the first curling iron plugged in around 8am to the last song played around 11pm or midnight. The run sheet is what keeps those twelve hours from turning into twelve separate guesses.

What a wedding run sheet is (and how it differs from a timeline)

People use "run sheet" and "timeline" like they're the same thing. They're not, and mixing them up is how a florist shows up two hours early to an empty venue.

A timeline is for the couple. It's the planning document, the one that lives in a notes app or a spreadsheet somewhere, mapping out the shape of the day so the couple can see it all in one place. It's personal, it's flexible, and honestly, it can be a bit messy. Nobody else needs to read it.

A run sheet is different. It's the version that goes out to the people actually running the day: the operational document, built for people who weren't in the room for a single planning conversation and need to know, at a glance, who's doing what at 2:47pm. It names names, assigns tasks, and is the single source of truth that a florist, a celebrant, and a venue coordinator can all read at the same time and land on the same page.

Think of the timeline as the couple's private diary and the run sheet as the shared group chat everyone actually checks. One's for reflection. The other's for action.

A full example run sheet for an Australian wedding day (hour by hour, ceremony 3pm and 5pm variants)

A full day looks like this when the ceremony starts at 3pm, a popular slot because it leaves enough daylight for photos and still gets guests to dinner at a reasonable hour.

Shift the ceremony to 5pm and the whole shape of the day compresses. Getting-ready still starts around 8am or 9am, but the photographer's afternoon window for outdoor portraits gets tighter, especially in winter when the sun's gone by 5:30pm in most Australian states. The 5pm version pushes formal photos to before the ceremony (a "first look" setup) rather than after, and the reception doesn't really get moving until 6:30pm or 7pm, with speeches, dinner, and dancing all squeezed into a shorter, later window that runs past midnight more often than the 3pm version does.

Run sheet format for a 5pm ceremony

A 5pm ceremony is a different planning problem from a 3pm one, because the thing running out isn't time, it's daylight.

Golden hour photography, the soft, flattering light photographers chase for portraits, happens in the hour or so before sunset. Book a 5pm ceremony in July in a city with early winter sunsets and that light is gone by 5:30pm. So the run sheet has to front-load everything: hair and makeup starts earlier, the photographer arrives earlier, and family formals often happen before the ceremony instead of after it, so there's still usable light left for couple portraits.

The back half of the night is the other big difference. A 5pm ceremony means a later dinner, later speeches, and a first dance that might not happen until 9pm or later. Build in buffers, real ones, of 15 to 20 minutes around each major transition (ceremony to canapés, dinner to speeches, speeches to first dance), because a 5pm day has less room to absorb delays before it starts eating into the DJ's contracted hours or the venue's curfew.

What the MC needs that the couple's run sheet leaves out

The couple's run sheet tells everyone what's happening. The MC's version has to tell one specific person how to make it happen out loud, in front of a room, without stumbling.

That means the MC's copy needs things nobody else's does: phonetic pronunciation guides for names (not everyone's surname is intuitive, and mangling the groom's grandmother's name mid-toast is not a great look), cue words to signal the DJ or band for song changes, and lighting cues if the venue's doing anything with uplighting or a spotlight for the first dance. It also needs direct contact details for the venue coordinator and the photographer, because if a speech runs long or the cake's not ready, the MC is the one who has to fill the gap or adjust on the fly, and they need to know who to text, not who to guess at.

None of this belongs on the couple's run sheet. It'd just be noise to them. But hand the MC a copy that's missing it, and the run sheet stops being useful the moment something goes even slightly off script, which, on a wedding day, is most of the afternoon.

Who gets a copy and when

Timing matters almost as much as content here. A run sheet handed to a vendor too late is barely better than no run sheet.

• Photographers and videographers: one to two weeks before the wedding, so they can plan shot lists and know exactly when family formals and golden hour photos need to happen.
• MC and celebrant: a finalised copy three to five days out, once times are locked and nothing's likely to shift again.
• Venue staff and catering: on the day itself, though venues often want a draft earlier to coordinate their own kitchen and floor timing.
• Florist and hire companies: aligned to their delivery and pack-down windows, usually a few days ahead so they can schedule vehicles and staff.
• Bridal party and family: a simplified version, focused on where they need to be and when, without the vendor-facing detail that would only confuse them.

Each of these is a different document tuned to a different job, even if they all come from the same master run sheet.

Best way to share the run sheet with your vendors

Emailing a PDF feels like progress. It isn't, not really, because the moment one detail changes, and something always changes, that PDF is already wrong.

The ceremony gets pushed back 30 minutes because a groomsman's flight lands late. The couple updates their own copy, emails a new PDF to the photographer, forgets to resend it to the florist, and the MC is still working off a version from two weeks ago. Now three people are running three different days.

A live link fixes this by making the update-and-resend step disappear. Change the time once, and everyone looking at that link sees the new version immediately, without a follow-up email or a "sorry, ignore the last one" text at 11pm the night before the wedding.

How WedBuild's event schedule keeps one version of the day

A run sheet built in a document goes stale the second the ceremony time moves, and from there, every vendor is holding a slightly different version of the truth. That's not a hypothetical; it's just what happens with static files: someone edits their copy, forgets who else needs the update, and the gap between versions grows quietly until someone shows up at the wrong time.

WedBuild's event schedule lays the day out in day and week views, in the same account as your guest list and checklist, so the plan sits with the people it affects instead of in a separate file. There is one copy of it to keep current rather than several. Build the day the way it's laid out in Create a Wedding Day Timeline, cross-check it against the Wedding Day Planning Checklist, and what you hand your vendors is the same plan you have been working from.

WedBuild's free plan covers the wedding website, RSVPs, guest list, and checklist for up to 50 guests, which is enough to get the bones of a day sorted before spending anything. Standard runs A$99 one-time and Pro runs A$199 one-time, each with two years of access, and there's no subscription sitting in the background charging monthly. New couples also get seven days of the Pro tools free with no card required, so testing the paid features in the full pricing breakdown costs nothing but time. The tool is built in Australia and priced in the local currency, which matters more than it sounds like it should when every other tool quietly bills in US dollars.

Frequently asked questions

What time should a wedding run sheet start?

With the first vendor arrival of the day, which for most Australian weddings is hair and makeup, somewhere between 7am and 9am depending on the ceremony time and how large the bridal party is.

How detailed should a run sheet be?

Detailed enough that someone who's never met the couple could run the day off it. That means named tasks, specific times (not "morning" or "afternoon"), and contact details for the people who need to make quick decisions.

Who actually writes the run sheet?

In most cases the couple drafts the first version, often with input from a celebrant or MC, and a venue coordinator or wedding planner, where one's involved, tends to refine it into its final, vendor-ready shape.

Can WedBuild build a run sheet?

Yes. The event schedule inside WedBuild covers the day in day and week views, and it sits in the same account as the guest list and checklist, so the schedule and the guest details are not kept in separate files.

Does WedBuild charge a subscription for the event schedule?

No. WedBuild has no subscription for couples: the event schedule is part of the free plan, and Standard at A$99 and Pro at A$199 are one-time payments that each include two years of access.