This week in the midst of having finished another wedding's worth of photos that we've been editing along with prepping to design and create 4 physical wedding albums at the start of August next week (as well as print 600 wedding photos for our awesome couples!), we'd love to share with you some insider tips of creating the Wedding Day Schedule.
First we'll give you a sample Wedding Schedule below, then we'll explain each portion/ the reasoning behind them and what the most important parts of the schedule are, and then let ya know and what you can cut our or move around!
SAMPLE WEDDING SCHEDULE (10 hours):
10:30 - 12:00: Couple getting ready- Photographers capturing this Pre-Ceremony Prep (Jenny with Bride, Jason with Groom).
12:05: Shuttle takes Groom & Groomsmen to ceremony location
12:15: Separate Shuttle takes Bride & Bridesmaids to ceremony location
1:00 - 2:00: Wedding Ceremony!!
2:00 - 2:45: Formal Photographs with families, bridal party, and couple along at Ceremony Location.
2:50 - 2:55: Entire group of Ceremony Attendees in photo on steps outside of Ceremony Location.
3:00 - 5:00: Bridal Party formal individual photos & group photos with Bride & Groom at various locations near ceremony location, then near reception location. Bride & Groom MARRIED Portraits in various locations. Any group photos not taken at Ceremony Location taken.
5:00 - 6:00: Cocktail Hour.
6:05: Bridal Party Entrances
6:10: First Dance & Cake Cutting! (East Coast Style)
6:15: Father of the Bride welcomes guests.
6:20: (Optional) Dinner Blessing.
6:25: Salads Served.
6:35: Maid of Honor & Best Man Speeches!
6:45: Dinner Served.
7:45 - 8:00: Mother-Son & Father-Daughter Dances.
8:00 - 8:30: Open Dance Begins! Photographers leave at 8:30 p.m. (Can purchase more hours of photography if anything runs late.)
*In this scenario the ceremony location and reception location are separate. If both are in the same location and everyone ALSO gets ready at that location, you may be able to cut out an hour of this schedule. We ourselves offer packages that are 6, 8, and 10 hours long (with the option to purchase more hours at a highly discounted rate for more than 10 hours) and we were thinking about phasing out the 6 hour package because it's EXTREMELY difficult to get all of the important photos of a wedding day within just 6 hours if you want everything included. It's extremely rare for any couple to ever book 6 hours because of how most wedding days flow. We honestly often shoot no 6 hour weddings per year because at minimum the bride & groom tack another hour on because they need photos of the cake cutting or something like that and the day rarely runs perfectly on time.
For weddings in general we always start with two questions:
1) Do you want "prep" or "getting ready" photos before the ceremony? ( -> highly recommended for at least 45 minutes).
2) Do you have a tentative reception schedule OR do you know when the reception ends or when Open Dance starts...? This helps us gauge when the start and end times of the wedding photography will be and helps us start making a solid schedule. The least important thing to capture ALL of is Open Dance. We suggest cutting the end reception hours of photography if Open Dance is hours long UNLESS you really want a "Sparkler Exit" photographed of you two leaving the building cheered on by your attendees at the end of your reception. Next would be cutting back hours on the "Prep" i.e. pre-getting ready photos.
Here are important tips to the Wedding Day Schedule:
1) TRANSPORTATION is KEY! We've had brides and grooms scrambling for an hour to get a ride to the ceremony or a portrait location with their bridal party looking for keys, moving the cars around, and getting everyone gathered. It REALLY helps to have a party bus, limo, shuttle, or anything to get you around if your pre-ceremony getting ready spots, ceremony, and reception aren't all at the same place. If they ARE, then you're golden (and wise)!
2) Designate a separate 30 to 45 minutes at least if you want formal group photos in the ceremony spot/ church of you two and your families. THEN designate ANOTHER 2 hours (or at minimum over an hour) to your bridal party photos, individual bridal party photos, and photos of the two of you at at least 3 separate locations. This amount of time accounts for the walking or driving from one spot to the next (which on campuses can take up to 20 minutes of walking), the posing of each person, us trying to get more natural and romantic photos of the two of you without everyone standing around staring at you two, and also then the travel to the reception spot. This gives you diversity AND all of the formal photos of groups out of the way! After all of that chaos it'll be nice to have the two of you together at the end of this getting photographed together as a married couple!
3) Choose when you want Cake Cutting and your First Dance! We suggest East Coast Style: After you get announced in, you do your First Dance as an intro to you being married and then immediately cut your cake afterward! This gives servers time to cut the cake as they prep the salad and dinner plates to go out. ALSO after dinner and during dancing often people are full, have drank, and their attention spans have wandered and many may unintentionally miss seeing the cake cutting. At least at the beginning when you are announced in everyone is there, sitting, and attentive!
4) Serve salads before or AS the Maid of Honor and Best Man give their speeches! People will be HANGRY at this point and may have already drank at your Happy Hour (if you had one) and will really need food (and so will you!). *Special trick: You can also have food waiting for you and the bridal party as soon as you get to the reception after pictures since you may not get to partake in Happy Hour hors doeuvres.
5) Make sure you have a bit of a window for margin of error: The wedding likely won't stay on schedule (though we work hard to make sure it does), so build in a buffer of a half hour or hour at the end after all of the important Reception events should be done! The DJ is amazing. Always give your photographer the DJ schedule about a month in advance or within the month of your wedding at the very least (try to make sure they have it a week prior)!! You can go to your DJ with a tentative schedule and they'll make it formal and stick to it well! They're amazing at that.
6) Having helpers and great people around you is so crucial. If you don't have a wedding planner, please make sure to have a great photographer and/ or DJ and/ or friend or family member who is OCD (*but calm and collected) who can help you through the fine details of planning at the very least the wedding day. Some of our brides have everything on their shoulders which some are fine with and some get overwhelmed by. Being overwhelmed is natural: It's a big day. Don't stress, though. If your dress is heavy or you need help, please ask someone to consistently carry it behind you. We are here to help, everyone at the wedding is there to help, and that's why you have a bridal party, right...? For the friendship! Reliable, kind friends and family are extremely valuable. You two have a lot on your plates (hopefully literally for dinner!) and it's always so, so nice to have helpers who are genuinely out to help you first and foremost and will put your comfort and happiness first!
Conclusion:
Having said all of this, we hope this has helped you sort through a possible schedule for your Big Day! We often feel as though we may as well be Wedding Planners with all of the vendors who we refer and schedules that we make, but there ARE trained professional Wedding Planners who do this for a living. It does help a lot to confer with a very skilled and seasoned photographer who can help guide you through what is needed and what's not needed for the schedule and how you can condense everything into a well-flowing schedule.
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Other Updates & UPCOMING Bride vs Bride!!
We're heading down to in Nashville tomorrow for the weekend, but coming up next weekend we will be at a wedding expo here locally NEXT Sunday August 5th (1 to 4 pm at the ICE Athletic Center) called Bride vs Bride-! Grab your Bride Tribe because we will be hosting a game at @BrideVsBride Wedding Games here locally in a couple weeks on Sunday August 5th (1 to 4 pm at the ICE Athletic Center)-!! (Think of it as the Hunger Games for gaining free things for your wedding... without death or any negative consequences!) Call your bridesmaids, momma, and friends to assemble your team. This event is all about playing games, winning huge prizes (worth hundreds!) from us wedding pros, and getting to know your local wedding professionals in the most FUN way possible-!! You and your team will compete against other brides and their teams gaining the opportunity to win prizes given by us- the wedding pros! From a 9ft beach ball to Bride Pong to life size Angry Birds, we have it all! (When is the last time you got to play jumbo games with all of your besties?!) Get on it & we'll see you there-!!
PLEASE share with your Engaged friends our code for a FREE ticket for the bride to participate (all caps): JENNYJASONPHOTO so that your friends can compete to win FREE wedding items from us vendors! Here's the link to purchase any other tickets for the event (and where to enter that code for the FREE TICKET!): www.bridevsbride.com and here's the link to the Facebook Event Page: www.facebook.com/events/1506714756124497/ **Both of the links listed are clickable and will take you directly to the event pages-!!
The day prior to the Bride vs Bride expo of fun games we will be in Ohio on Saturday to create fine art glass to build the knowledge base for fine art. We practice fine art on the side and since Jenny has her MFA in Fine Art (like PhD for artists- many MFAs teach in universities) she deeply believes that we need to hone many fine art abilities. We were in Ohio just last year in Spring to make a different sort of glass form (sculpting molten glass into a medium-sized heavy donut with colored icing and all), but this year we are making a thin fine art piece based on Labino's work that should look like the photo:
Have a great weekend and we'll catch you next week when we return with more wedding photos next Weekly Wednesday in preparation for Bride vs Bride next Sunday in just a week and a half-!! Don't forget to get your FREE bride ticket from us at: www.bridevsbride.com before next weekend-!!