Load-In, Setup and the Hours Before Any Guest Arrives

Both approaches to the setup sequence before a wedding work. What differs is what they cost you, and the cost is what this sets out.

Setup has a dependency order

Furniture goes in before linen, linen before place settings, and lighting rigs before anything that would be in the way of a ladder. Florists cannot dress tables that are not yet placed, and bands cannot sound-check over a room being laid. Sending everyone an arrival time without thinking about this produces a queue of suppliers waiting for each other in a car park.

The venue usually knows the right order for their own space and will say so if asked, which is the easiest way to get it right. A setup schedule is a shorter document than a run sheet and prevents just as many problems.

Checking the access window

Compare the total setup time your suppliers need against the access time the venue contract allows, and do it before booking anything. Where the venue hosted an event the night before, your access may start much later than you assumed. If the window is too short, the options are a simpler setup, an earlier access fee if one is available, or a different venue.

Once the deposit is paid, this arithmetic is rarely done, and it is the reason so many weddings are still being dressed as guests arrive. Ask each supplier how long they need on site and add them up honestly rather than optimistically.

Deliveries and who receives them

Hired items, cakes, flowers, stationery and anything you have made yourself all arrive at some point and someone has to be there. That person needs to know what is expected, where it goes and what to do if something is missing or wrong.

The decision that unlocks the rest: give them a list with quantities, since a delivery short by two tablecloths is only discoverable against a written count. Establish where deliveries are left, because a cake in a warm room for four hours is a specific and avoidable disaster. The receiving role is genuinely important and is almost never assigned in advance.

Who runs the morning

Neither of you can run the setup, because you will be getting ready, greeting family and being photographed doing both. A coordinator, a venue manager or a nominated relative has to hold the setup schedule and make the small decisions as they arise. Give them authority to decide, since most setup questions have several acceptable answers and finding you costs more than choosing wrong.

Brief them the day before rather than on the morning, when everyone is busy and nothing is absorbed properly.

The best gift you can give yourselves is not being asked where the table numbers are.

The rehearsal and the walk-through

Where a rehearsal is possible, use it to test the practical questions rather than only the emotional ones, including entrances, sound and sightlines. Walk the route, check the microphone actually works in that room, and confirm that anyone with a role knows where to stand.

For ceremonies with processions or movement, a rehearsal is genuinely necessary rather than a nicety. If no rehearsal is possible, a written note to everyone with a role covers most of the same ground. The point is that nobody should be learning what to do while it is happening.

Quoted costs rarely include service charges, taxes or overtime, and all three arrive later.

Packing down

Collections happen at defined times, often the following morning, and someone has to be present who is not you. Anything you brought has to leave, which for a large setup is a real task requiring a vehicle and a person who is capable the next day. Assign this before the wedding, not on the night, because the night is when nobody is in a position to volunteer.

On the day itself, establish what the venue does with items left behind, since the answer is frequently that they dispose of them. Gifts, cards and anything valuable need a named person and a plan before the evening starts.

Side by side

The takeaway

Write the setup order, give it to someone who is not getting married, and the morning stops being a scramble.

Protect the hour you will actually remember and let the rest be approximate.