Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard Weddings: The Island Timeline

An island wedding has one extra item on the timeline that no mainland wedding has: the boat. Everything else on the schedule, the ceremony hour, the portrait walk, the first dance, has to be built around the fact that the vendors, the guests and the rings all crossed water to get there, and that the last ferry does not wait. Here is how we plan it.

The boat

Nantucket's year-round boats leave from Hyannis and the Vineyard's from Woods Hole; summer adds more ports, and the fast boats are an hour or less. We travel to the island the day before, because a Saturday-morning cancellation for weather is the one thing that cannot be fixed with a bigger tip. Build a full buffer into the guest schedule: a ceremony at 4:30 means guests on a boat no later than 1:00, and a reception that ends at 11:00 means most of them are staying the night. That is not a complication; it is the reason island weddings feel like a weekend rather than an evening.

The light, month by month

Computed for Nantucket on the 15th of each month in 2027. Martha's Vineyard is two minutes later, so the same table serves both.

Our rule for an outdoor ceremony is simple: start it two hours and forty-five minutes before sunset. Vows take twenty to thirty minutes, family formals another thirty, and that leaves a portrait walk that lands in golden hour with the reception opening as the light goes. Move the ceremony later than that and portraits happen in the dark; earlier and you are photographing in flat, overhead light with the good hour wasted on cocktail hour.

In June that is a 5:30 PM ceremony with sunset at 8:15 PM; by September, the islands' second season, the ceremony has moved up to 4:04 PM. Both islands have water on every side, so the sunset question is about the venue: Nantucket's harbor venues look east across the harbor and get a soft evening glow with the sun setting over town behind them, while the south and west shores get it into the water. On the Vineyard, Edgartown harbor faces east, Menemsha and the west shore get the sunset, and Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven look north across the Sound.

Nantucket

White Elephant Nantucket and The Nantucket Hotel & Resort are a block apart on Easton Street, the White Elephant right on the harbor; The Wauwinet is out at the end of the island on the head of the harbor, a proper drive, with the quietest water on Nantucket. The Dreamland is the theater on South Water Street, the in-town room for a couple marrying at one of the churches a few blocks away.

Martha's Vineyard

Harbor View Hotel is Edgartown's grand hotel with the lighthouse view; Winnetu Oceanside Resort and The Dunes are the beach-resort option on South Beach with the surf a walk away. The Agricultural Society in West Tisbury is the up-island fairground, a big field with a real barn, and Lambert's Cove Inn & Resort is its country-inn neighbor. Grange Hall and Union Chapel are the historic rooms: a nineteenth-century hall up-island and the octagonal chapel in Oak Bluffs.

One honesty note for both lists: Shining Tides Weddings in Mattapoisett is on the mainland, across Buzzards Bay, not on either island. It appears in searches for both because it is the waterfront venue nearest the New Bedford boat, and it is a real alternative for couples who want the coast without the boat.

Every venue above has its own page with sunset at that exact address and pricing, and the hubs for Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard list them all.

Elizabeth Scott is an independent wedding photography and film studio. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by any venue named here; venue names identify where couples marry. Ratings and review counts are Google's as of our last check and will change. Sunset and golden-hour times are computed for the 15th of each month in 2027; an outdoor ceremony in open shade can run 20-30 minutes later than the start times we suggest.