Nailing your Wedding Photography Timeline
Ready to organise a timeline schedule for your wedding day?
Right?! This is a really fucking big one when it comes to your wedding planning and ensuring your wedding photographer and videographer capture all the moments you’ve pictured in your head. Where do you even start? If you get it wrong you could be up all sorts of creeks…pretty shitty ones at that. Timelines should be worked out before you lock in your ceremony & reception times because let’s face it, you don’t want to end up with a ceremony at 1pm and the reception starting at 6pm. Firstly a 1pm ceremony will ultimately be not that great for photos, and then you’ll have your guests waiting around for 5 hours until the reception starts.. Your photographer and videographer are the only two people who will be at the wedding from start to finish. They know how things run and how to time everything.
When a couple book me, one of the things I give them is timeline assistance. And out of all the weddings I’ve photographed there has only been two where the timeline wasn’t correct…how did they slip through, you ask… they weren’t my weddings 🤭 I stepped in for another Biz when they couldn’t attend - there’ll be a story at another time for those ones….
In my experience, the more planning a couple does before the big day, the more their wedding runs like clockwork. And the best part of doing some major planning ahead of time? Your only job during the ceremony and reception will be to enjoy yourself and revel in every moment!
One tip: Try to be realistic when allotting time to each specific section – you don’t want to feel rushed in completing any step. It’s much better to have a little bit of extra time than stressing over a task not being completed. As an overview, your timeline should include:
Partner 1 prep photos
Partner 2 prep photos
Guest arrival at ceremony
Your arrival at ceremony
Ceremony commences
Congrats/cuddle time
Group photo
Family photos
Wedding party photos
Couple portraits
Guests to be seated at reception
Couple to enter reception
Speeches
Sunset or Late Night portraits
Meals
Dancing
Exit
Some traditional things you could include:
Cutting the cake
The first dance
Father/daughter dance
ADDITIONAL THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN CREATING YOUR SCHEDULE, INCLUDE…
Decide what part/s of the day is the most important to you and your lover.
Is it partying on the dance floor later in the night; or making sure you have some solo time with your lover before the ceremony to get rid of some nerves - ie. First Look; Or is it spending the time with your close friends and family during the morning prep? Whatever it is, work that shit out. Write it down. Tell your photographer and videographer so they can help plan your timeline to the T.
2. Find out when Sunset will be.
This will determine some things. If you want sunset portraits, for example, you need to allocate some time before and after the sunset time. For the couple portraits, 60 minutes is the minimum time I schedule. If we finish earlier, then you have time to freshen up and just chill before you enter your reception.
Wedding Party portraits I schedule around 30 minutes for these. So a total of 90 minutes for Wedding Party & Couples portraits. Schedule that in to start 90 minutes before sunset. This gives you guys and us some time to breath, not rush anything and let everything flow smoothly.
3. Make a list for your family portraits
If you don’t, you’ll be left flustered and half of your family will have disappeared to the bar, and grandma left to find a seat somewhere and will have to be walked back out. So allow 20-30 minutes for all the different combinations you want of the family, and make sure you give the list to someone to ensure everyone stays around before sneaking off to the bar.
4. Make time to let your guests congratulate you
I always allow 10 minutes for congratulations and just saying hey to your guests before all the formal photos begin.
5. Ceremony time
This one is pretty easy to work out - check with your celebrant to see how long they’ve allocated for your ceremony. Some can go for 45 minutes and some can go for 10! Heat stroke in queensland is a bitch and avoiding you and your guests from succumbing to that sucker is to plan the ceremony for mid afternoon, whenever that may be in the season you’ll be getting married, and following this timeline assistance, you’ll be scheduling your ceremony bang on mid afternoon.
6. Allow time to travel between each location
If each prep, ceremony, portrait locations and reception are in different locations, I account for the travel time for us between each of them as well.
Make sure you check the time it will take to travel to your ceremony and add on 10 minutes. Traffic, nerve’s, something happens to one of the wedding party’s outfits….It’s better to have more time than to be running late. If you’re early, get your driver to do a few laps around the local blocks.
7. Morning Preparations
To make sure you have a relaxed morning while you’re getting ready, allocate a good chunk of time here. There are a lot of things that happen during prep, not just getting dressed and getting your face and hair done! Hanging out having a laugh, having a few breakfast mimosas or some cheeky beers, helping each other put the final touches on your outfits, having a first look with Dad who may just shed a tear, amending someone’s outfit that doesn’t quite fit since the last try on date that was 3 months ago…. I allocate 90 minutes each here to make sure all the things are captured.
8. And now back to the reception
Your Venue will tell you when you’ll enter the reception and when they will serve dinner. Now you need to work out when to do your first dance, cake cutting, speeches, and when to get the party started! There’s a few ways you can do it and I’ll be sharing those tips in another post soon! ;)
I hope that helps!. Feel free to share with anyone you know planning their wedding. Timelines are a very important part of the planning process and something I fucking hate to see wrong because I know how easy it is to plan one!
Want to see an example timeline with everything that I’ve written above? Hit me up and I’ll share one with you :)
