Planning Your Wedding Timeline
This is some great wedding timeline timeline advice from a photographer’s point of view!
Originally Posted on Darby Elizabeth Photography
Planning Your Wedding Timeline
There are so many wonderful guides online to help you plan and map out your wedding day timeline.
This timeline from Liene Stevens over at Blue Orchid is a great guide to help you remember to include key events into your timeline that you might otherwise neglect. Also here’s a fabulous mock up timeline from WeddingBee that show’s how a wedding timeline might look for brides to have a starting point in planning their day.
I thought it might be fun to add my thoughts as a photographer to these great minds on things to consider when drafting your wedding timeline. And since I’m a photographer, most of my suggestions tend to be about the photography heavy portions of the day!
Family Photos: If you have very small families you can get away with 15-20 minutes for this sections of the day. I usually suggest having 30-45 minutes set aside just for family photos. We usually don’t get all of this time due to outside factors such as a family member being late or MIA at the time of photos. Also it’s common to add extra group photos as we are shooting. I love adding extra groups as I come from a huge family and always want to have the shot of me and my cousins of my mom and her sisters, but it does add extra time so buffering your time-line to allow for these kinds of situations is a great idea.
I also love to shoot the family photos before the wedding when the bride and groom are seeing each other prior to the wedding ceremony. One great advantage to taking all of the family photos prior to the wedding ceremony is that everyone can enjoy and mingle during the cocktail hour!
Bridal Party Photos: I love bridal party photo time because it’s just the bride and groom with their best friends! My biggest suggestion for the bridal party photos is to have an extra person on hand to be the drink runner or errand person should someone be missing. One of the hardest parts of shooting a large group of fun young people is that someone is always running off to do something. By having an extra hand it will help keep things moving along at a swift pace. Bridal party photos are one of the liveliest and fun times of the entire day. I usually like having around 20-30 minutes just with my bridal party, though I’ll always take more time when I can get it!
Bride and Groom Photos: Well your photographer is not going to complain if you give them tons of time to shoot photos of the two of you. I love to have at least thirty minutes set aside just for the couple at a minimum. While that might sound like plenty of time we usually don’t get all of that time to ourselves. On your wedding day everyone wants to give you a hug and a kiss and tell you how good looking you are, which is so much fun but takes a few moments here and there. Buffering your time together will allow you and your guest to mingle as your photographer takes you around the venue while allowing your photographer to get all of the shots that you fell in love with and hired them to get! If you have the ability try to set aside 60 minutes for your couple photoshoot so that you have some of that buffer time built in.
Also if you are seeing each other prior to the wedding it is a little easier to maximize that couple photoshoot time. When shooting the couple photoshoot after the ceremony during cocktail hour plan on spending 15-20 minutes signing the wedding license and being congratulated!
End of the Wedding: One area of the wedding that is kind of unclear is how long to have your photographer stay at your wedding. While this varies for your event needs and ceremony time my general suggestion is 10 or 10:30 and here’s why. By 10 or 10:30 the bar has usually been open for 4-5 hours and your guests are probably becoming a little adverse to bright flashes and just want to relax with their cake and coffee. This suggestion is exactly that, a suggestion, but I’ve found it to be pretty true for most weddings.
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My weddingfilm
My Wedding Film was started by two sisters with a penchant for creativity and a desire to change the way wedding video was viewed.
Tossing aside the usual, Darby and Ande dove head first into creating what are now known as "Wedding Films." They spent years refining and defining the art of wedding cinematography.
They wanted to create a movie that could and would delight audiences who both knew the couple and those who didn't
Don't be surprised if you get caught up in the emotion of someone else's wedding film and imagine how powerful your own Wedding Film will be!
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