Polite Ways to Handle Tardy Wedding Guests

One thing all events have in common is latecomers. Unfortunately, this rule also applies to your wedding ceremony. Despite the strict starting time you listed on invites, come wedding day there will be stragglers. Here, how to deal with them and still bounce back.

For starters, you can’t really keep latecomers from entering your house of worship, so it’s all about timing. “I wait in the vestibule and sneak guests in,” says Daniele Bobish of Curtain Up Events in New York City. “Just make sure it’s not at a point where all eyes are on the bride.”

If you don’t have the advantage of a wedding planner, you should assign one of the ushers or a reliable friend to keep an eye out for stragglers. Most guests will be smart enough to wait for an appropriate time to enter the house of worship (when the bride makes her entrance would not be wise), but a helping hand is a good idea.

Make sure whoever’s in charge seats latecomers in the back, and doesn’t walk them down the center aisle. At this point in the wedding, even close relatives can sacrifice their up-front seat. (If convenient, they can move up at another point.)

Another smart idea is to get as many punctuation reminders out ahead of time. In addition to posting the ceremony start time on your web page, and in related emails, you should list a contact number for people to call the day of. (Do not make it a member of the wedding party.) This person should be available for people who’ve lost any information and can’t remember the start time or have lost, for example, the map to the ceremony site.

One final tip: List the ceremony time a half-hour earlier than the actual time. If your wedding starts at 6:30, put down 6:00 on the invites. “People do this all the time,” says Bobish. “Everyone involved in the wedding will have their own time, so no one is inconvenienced.”

In this respect, planning a wedding isn’t all that different from planning a theatrical performance or a rock concert—both of which always start a little bit after “curtain.” The only difference is, in this case, you’re the star.

-David Toussaint

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