What a run sheet is for
A run sheet is not a schedule for you. It is a schedule for everyone else — the MC who needs to know when the speeches land, the venue who needs to know when to serve main, the photographer who cannot miss the first dance because they were outside changing a lens. The value is not that the times are written down. It is that one document is the answer, so nobody is asking you at 9:15 while you are mixing.
Which is why the format matters more than the detail. Times down the left in one column, one line each, biggest type on the moment name. A coordinator reads it standing up, in a service corridor, holding two plates. Anything that needs a second read has already failed.
What belongs on it — and the four things that do not
Every moment gets four fields and stops: the time, what happens, how long it runs, and who owns it. The fifth field — a single line of context — is where the sheet earns its keep: “confirm the entrance song and which door they come through” is the note that stops a wrong-door entrance, and it costs eight words.
What stays off: your track list, your levels, your rider, and the couple’s do-not-play list. Those are yours, and putting them on a sheet you hand to four other people is how a private do-not-play ends up read out loud. Keep the shared sheet to what other people have to act on.
Why the night is broken into segments
A wedding is not one block, it is two or three with different rules. Arrivals and dinner run to the kitchen’s clock. The dance floor runs to the room’s. The pack-down runs to the venue’s curfew, which is the only hard number on the whole page.
Segments exist so a delay stays inside the block it happened in. If speeches start fifteen minutes late, everything after speeches moves fifteen minutes — but the tool tells you when that pushes something past the end of the block, rather than silently extending the night into a curfew you are going to get billed for. That is the same rule the paid product enforces, and it is deliberately the same here: a warning, never an automatic fix.
A wedding reception, timed
This is the order the builder above starts from — not a claim about how a night should run, just the shape of the thing with real times in it, so you are editing rather than staring at an empty form.
Arrivals and dinner · 5:30pm – 8:30pm
| Time | What happens | Runs | Owner |
|---|
| 5:30pm | Doors and guest arrivalsBackground playlist, low volume — people are still talking. | 60 min | DJ |
| 6:30pm | Couple entranceConfirm the entrance song and the door they come through. | 10 min | MC |
| 6:40pm | Welcome and seating | 10 min | MC |
| 6:50pm | Entrée served | 40 min | Venue |
| 7:30pm | SpeechesGet the running order and the name pronunciations before the night. | 45 min | MC |
| 8:15pm | Main served | 15 min | Venue |
Dance floor · 8:30pm – 11:30pm
| Time | What happens | Runs | Owner |
|---|
| 8:30pm | Cake cut | 10 min | MC |
| 8:40pm | First danceFull song or fade at the chorus — ask, do not assume. | 5 min | DJ |
| 8:45pm | Floor opens | 105 min | DJ |
| 10:30pm | Last drinks called | 5 min | Venue |
| 11:00pm | Last songAgree it with the couple in advance. | 5 min | DJ |
| 11:05pm | Pack downVenue curfew is the hard stop — check it, do not guess it. | 25 min | DJ |
How to hand it over
Print two. One for the coordinator and one that stays on your booth, because the coordinator’s copy will end up in a kitchen. Send the PDF to the MC and the photographer the week before, not the morning of — the point of writing it down is that people can read it before they are standing in the room.
And write the curfew on it even though nothing happens at the curfew. It is the one time on the sheet that costs money if it is wrong.
What this tool deliberately does not do
Each of these is a Kadens feature, and each is left out on purpose rather than faked. A free tool showing a panel that can never populate teaches you the feature is worthless.
- Conflict detection
- Kadens flags a moment that crosses the venue curfew, a person who owns two things at once, and a request that is on the do-not-play list. All three need crew, anchors and a song list — none of which an anonymous page has — so a conflict panel here would sit empty forever.
- Crew, roles and tasks
- Owner here is a name you typed. In the product it is a person with a login, a role that decides what they can change, and tasks that move when their moment moves.
- Music cues, must-plays and setlists
- A run sheet handed to a venue should not carry them (see above), and the versions that matter are attached to moments in the product, filtered by who is reading.
- Saving, sharing or coming back to it
- There is no account and no draft, so there is nothing to come back to. Finish it in one sitting and take the file.
Questions
What is a run sheet?
A timed running order for one night: what happens, when it happens, how long it runs, and who is responsible for making it happen. It is the document the DJ, the MC, the venue and the photographer all read off, which is why it lives on one page rather than in four people’s heads.
What belongs on a run sheet, and what does not?
On it: times, moment names, durations, owners, and the one line of context each moment needs. Off it: your music, your levels, your rider, and anything the venue does not need to act on. A run sheet that lists every song is a run sheet nobody reads under pressure at 10pm.
What are segments?
A segment is a block of the night with its own start and end — arrivals and dinner, then the dance floor. They exist so a change inside one block does not silently push the whole night: moving speeches shifts everything after it in that segment, and this tool warns you when something now ends after the segment closes rather than quietly extending it.
Does anything I type here get saved?
No. There is no account, no email field and no draft. Everything lives in the browser tab until you close it, which is why both ways out — print and PDF — are on the page rather than behind a signup.
What does the paid product do that this page does not?
This page produces a correct sheet on paper. Kadens keeps the sheet live on the night: the crew has it on their phones, a change at 7:40 reaches all of them, and the day-of console runs the show with the current moment, the next one, and how far behind you are. Paper cannot be updated once it is handed over — that is the whole difference.