Good morning and happy Wedding Wednesday, friends!
Today’s advice blog is all about Wedding Day Timelines. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the good, the bad and the downright ugly when it comes to wedding timelines. In our early years, we never realized just how vital a well-planned timeline can be for not only us as the photographers, but for everybody involved with the wedding. Without a good, structured plan in place, it’s almost a guarantee that either the wedding will run over its allotted time or things won’t happen, or if they do happen – people miss them because they simply didn’t know it was going on.
Case in point: We once shot a wedding without a timeline where the DJ called out for the tosses at some random point in the evening, and the groom wasn’t even in the building! Talk about awkward! Or the time where the wedding planner actually forgot to schedule in any time for us to take photos of the bride and groom – and she gave us less than 10 minutes to get from one venue to another – which was at least 25 minutes away. These are all things that can be absolutely avoided if you have a well-planned timeline worked out with your planner and photographer ahead of time.
The best weddings always have a good timeline set up beforehand – so everyone knows where to be, at the right time, and there’s no confusion on how long we have to do things. No matter if you’re a bride who likes to take the reins or more laid back – timelines will be your wedding day BFF (a stressed bride is not a happy one, in our experience). We like to print out the timeline beforehand and bring it with us, so we can make sure we are on top of things. We don’t want you to miss your own wedding just to take photos, either. One of the best parts of weddings is being able to celebrate with your friends and family!
Needless to say, over the years we’ve encountered just about everything that could go right (and wrong) with timelines – so today we wanted to sit down and give a sample timeline for a typical 9 hour ADS wedding. Obviously, it will need to be tweaked based on the start and finish times, whether or not the wedding couple has a first look, etc. (Fun fact: We actually do NOT prefer First Looks – I know, crazy right?! Happy to see the more traditional route is coming back in trend). Another trend we’ve noticed in the last few months is that brides and grooms are steering away from doing the bouquet and garter tosses, too … But more on trends in another post! *wink*
Please feel free to PIN this sample timeline to your Pinterest boards, and share with the brides and grooms you know that might need help planning their big day!
Hopefully this can help be a great starting point for brides and grooms planning their weddings; we love working with planners and DIY brides on their timelines to insure their wedding day is the BEST DAY EVER!
Until next week, xoxo!
