Hi Jim,

First of all you need a software for preparing your wedding programme. second, you need to learn how to use the software and it is not easy for a first timer like you. Microsoft project is probabaly the most easiest to learn scheduling tool, if not you can do it manually or with Excel as an aid. Now planning a wedding is not that simple, so you need to brain storm and list all the tasks or activities (this what we call data gathering) and group them under a heading (this will be your Work Breakdown Structure), which is what you already did above, you should also include Bridal's Gown and Grooms Toxido as part of the preparation. If I was the one planning, I would group the activities into the following:

Guest -  guest list, sponsors and invitiations

Clothing & Accessories - Bridal Gown, Entourage Gowns, Toxido and Accessories (incl bridal car)

Church - wedding protocol, flower arrangements, programme, Priest

Reception - food  Music & Programme

Honeymoon - Travel / Hotel Arrangements

A Gantt Chart is nothing but a Bar Chart, so the next thing to do is to arrange your activities in sequence and then assign an estimated duration for each activity, you may need to ask some experts or people who have been involve on such projects, this is part of your data gathering. Next, logically link activities in sequence, or according to you preference, you need to ask yourself, what needs to be done before we can do this activity (predecessor(s)) and what comes after this activity is your successor(s). Now when you finish linking all your activities, you can calculate the longest path (logically linked activities) by adding the duration of each activity and the longest path is obviously your "Critical Path"

Risk Analysis is basically performing a review of your programme and identifying or rating each activity as low, medium and high risk. You can do a research in Planning Planet as this subject have been discussed here extensively,

Best regards,

Daniel