About Vesperline

Vesperline is a free wedding-day planner that knows when the light goes. Enter a date, a venue and a ceremony time and it builds the whole day, places golden-hour portraits where they clash least with the formalities, and gives every vendor a run sheet. A second section, for mobile bars, turns guest numbers into a drinks shopping list and prices bar events from real costs. Everything runs in your browser.

How the timeline is calculated

The ceremony is the anchor. Before it, the planner works backwards: arrival and a hidden wait, travel (padded by 10–30 % depending on the buffer setting), a breathing-room buffer, 30 minutes to get dressed, 15 minutes after hair and makeup, and hair and makeup itself — people × minutes each ÷ artists, rounded up to 15 minutes. With a first look, portraits, wedding party and family photos also move before the ceremony. After the ceremony it works forwards: recessional, photos during cocktail hour (stretched, with a warning, if they don't fit), then the reception in a fixed running order. A block you move is pinned and everything after it in the same chain follows.

Sun times come from SunCalc (v1.9.0), an open-source implementation of standard astronomical formulas. Golden hour is the sun between 6° above the horizon and sunset; sunset is the sun’s upper edge at the horizon (−0.833°, allowing for refraction); blue hour ends at civil dusk, when the sun’s centre is 6° below the horizon — the National Weather Service definition of civil twilight. Times are calculated for a flat horizon at the venue’s coordinates and converted to the venue’s time zone, including daylight saving. Hills, trees and buildings can hide the sun earlier.

Golden-hour portraits are placed by scoring every 5-minute slot in the golden-hour window: overlapping a key moment (entrance, first dance, speeches, dances, cake, exit) is heavily penalised, overlapping dinner lightly, and slots ending about 10 minutes before sunset are preferred. If every slot clashes, speeches between courses wait until the couple is back, or the portraits are inserted into the reception sequence so the formalities after them move later.

Where the data comes from

• Places. The town search uses the GeoNames cities5000 dataset (CC BY 4.0), downloaded on 17 October 2026: places of 5,000+ people in the US, UK, Australia, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand and 15,000+ elsewhere, each with its time zone. The list is bundled with the site, so searching sends nothing to a third party. You can also use your device’s location or type coordinates.
• Destination sunset pages are computed at build time for 2027 with the same engine, using GeoNames coordinates for each destination’s anchor town.
• Budget benchmarks: The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study (US) and Hitched, January 2026 (UK). The default category split is a planning heuristic, not survey data.
• Drinks serving sizes: the NIAAA standard drink (US), GOV.UK specified quantities (UK) and Australian standard drinks.
• Licensing: GOV.UK — Temporary events notice and the US state agencies listed on the licensing checklists, checked 17 October 2026.

Rules of thumb, and why they’re editable

Several numbers are planning conventions rather than measurements: 45 minutes per person for hair and makeup, about 2 minutes per family photo grouping, a 90-minute plated dinner, two drinks per drinking guest in the first hour and one an hour after, 1.5 lb of ice per guest, one bartender per 50–75 guests. They are stated wherever they are used and every one can be changed. Your hair and makeup artist, photographer, caterer and bar company know their own timings better than any default.

Limits

• The licensing pages are checklists, not legal advice. Licensing authorities have the final word and rules change.
• Drinks quantities are estimates. Serve water throughout, and never serve anyone under age or intoxicated.
• Example prices in the bar tools are placeholders; replace them with your own quotes. Prices exclude tax.
• Sun times assume a flat horizon; check the light at the venue at the same time of day if you can.

Contact

Spotted a wrong number or a rule that has changed? Join the beta list from any page and reply to any update email — corrections are read first.