Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time tells you when.
A 4:00 wedding does not mean arriving at 4:00. Guests are expected to be seated before the ceremony starts, and the afternoon in front of that (getting ready, the drive, parking in a field, finding the right garden) runs close to three hours. Ready Time works backward from the ceremony so your afternoon has a timeline too, not just the couple's.
Shower, hair, the outfit that needed steaming yesterday, the card you were going to write ahead of time and are now writing in the car. Then a drive to a venue you've never been to, parking in a field, and a walk to whichever garden the ceremony is actually in. Every step is short. The stack of them is nearly three hours, and the couple's timeline doesn't wait for yours.
The unwritten rule: the time on the invitation is when the ceremony starts, and guests should be seated before it does. Ready Time counts backward from the ceremony through getting ready, the drive, parking, the walk, and the hellos, and tells you when the shower has to start. The last guest to sit down before the music starts is on time. The one walking in behind the bride is a story the couple tells later.
A common convention is 15 to 30 minutes before the invitation time: enough to park, find the ceremony site, sign the guest book, and sit. Lean toward 30 for large venues, shuttles, or a city you don't know; the plan on this page budgets closer to 35 for exactly those reasons. The invitation time itself is when the ceremony starts, not a suggested arrival window.
For most guests, yes. Shower, hair, and a pressed outfit fit comfortably in about two hours; add more if you're doing full hair and makeup or wrangling kids into formalwear. What usually blows the budget isn't the mirror, it's travel and parking, so give those their own time instead of borrowing from them.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time tells you when.
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