Looking for a wedding photography timeline tool?
Here is a free one. No account, no install, no card — type in a ceremony time and how long you are covering, and you get a complete day-of timeline and a shot list organised by phase of the day.
ThePhotogPlan generates a complete, editable wedding day timeline and a phase-organised shot list from four inputs — ceremony time, coverage hours, whether there is a first look, and one or two venues — in about thirty seconds, with no account and nothing to install. It covers eight session types (weddings, elopements, engagements, proposals, maternity, family, newborn and senior sessions), adds golden-hour timing from the venue's coordinates, builds family formals groupings, splits assignments for a second shooter, and exports to PDF, print or calendar. Every feature is free. An account is optional and only exists so saved plans, client share links and your branding have somewhere to live.
What you actually get
The generator is not AI. It is templates and time arithmetic, which is deliberate: a wedding timeline is a maths problem with a right answer. Sunset is at a known time, a ceremony takes about thirty minutes, family formals take roughly three minutes per grouping once people are assembled. You need the same correct answer every time, and you need to trust it at 4pm with a bride waiting — not a plausible answer that varies between runs.
A side effect of that choice is that the marginal cost of a user is genuinely zero, which is why there is no paid tier to upsell you to.
- An editable timeline you can retime, reorder, shift and extend
- A shot list grouped by phase, with a family formals builder
- Golden hour and blue hour for the venue, in the venue's timezone
- A day-of view — full screen on your phone during the shoot, showing the block you should be in now, the next one with a countdown, and a button that pushes the rest of the day back when you are running behind
- Gear checklist, key contacts, second-shooter splits
- PDF export, print, calendar (.ics), and a read-only link to send the couple
What it costs
Nothing. There is no paid tier, no trial, no card and nothing to cancel. It runs on donations — if it saves you an evening of timeline wrangling and you want to chip in, there is a support section on the homepage, and anything is genuinely appreciated. Donations buy nothing and unlock nothing, because everything is already unlocked.
What this tool does not do
Worth knowing before you invest any time in it. There is no client questionnaire — you enter the details, the couple does not fill in a form. There is no in-app approval or feedback workflow for clients or vendors; you send them a read-only link. And there is no native iOS or Android app, so it runs in a browser. The day-of view is built for phone screens, but it is still a web page.
Other tools exist
Daymarked and Timeline Pro are the two other wedding-timeline products photographers bring up most often, and both are actively maintained commercial products that work differently from this one.
We deliberately do not publish their pricing or feature lists here. We used to, and the problem with a comparison table is that it is accurate on the day you write it and slowly becomes a misrepresentation of somebody else's product. We are not trying to win a bake-off — this is a free tool offered to anyone who finds it useful. If you are weighing options, read their own sites, where the information is current and theirs to state.
Thirty seconds, no signup. Easiest way to find out if it is useful to you.
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