Getting married is easy…planning a wedding is the hard part! When you think about all the incredible images you wish to get to document your special day, it’s important to create a robust timeline that will allow your photographer to do their job effectively. Photography takes time. Don’t worry, I’m here to help! As a wedding photographer, I want to share a general timeline that I find works well for most weddings. I, of course, tweak it for each individual couple and you can do the same! Let’s imagine a timeline for a wedding where the morning prep, ceremony and reception all take place at the same venue. If using different venues, you would have to add travel time accordingly.
Anchor your day around the ceremony
First tip, plan your day around your ceremony. Once you know your ceremony time you can work backwards to make sure you’re ready on time and also schedule what’s going to happen later. Let’s imagine your ceremony takes place at noon and lasts around 30 minutes. As the photographer, I need to arrive to your venue at least 30 minutes ahead, to talk to the celebrant, shoot the venue and guests arriving. It also gives me a bit of a buffer time in case of delays. That means, I need to stop shooting your morning preparations at whatever time will allow me to get to your ceremony space no later than 11:30 am.
Morning prep
Now we can think about the preparations before the ceremony. In general, shooting the morning prep involves documenting your special objects, you two getting ready (final touches to hair and make-up, getting dressed, etc.) and your interactions with your wedding party. In general, this takes around 90 minutes. I would, then, knock on your door at around 10:00 am to catch the last touches to your hair and make-up. However, I usually arrive around 1 hour earlier (9:00 am) to scout the venue and find the best locations for portraits later in the day. If both partners were getting ready at different locations, then the timeline would look quite different and perhaps, a second shooter would be needed.
Portraits
After the ceremony, I generally give couples around 15 minutes to greet their guests before moving to family portraits. In general, family formals take around 30 minutes but it all depends on the amount of groups we’re shooting. I recommend couples to envision spending around 3 minutes per image. This may seem excessive, but getting people ready (especially when there’s an open bar around) takes time. It’s always better to assign photos too much time than to be running behind. To make sure things run smoothly I prepare a shooting list in advance with the couple and give a copy to a bossy friend (we all have one). The worst thing you can do is improvise your family formals on the spot.
Next, we move on to shoot intimate portraits just with the couple. The time can vary as I like to give couples the freedom to extend or cut short the session depending on how they are feeling on the day. During this time, I bring couples to the locations I scouted in the morning and we do a mix of candid shoots showing natural interactions and some that are a bit more prepared (using a few lights, for example). Nothing too over-posed and always responding to how you’re feeling. You need to feel relaxed and enjoying yourself. In general, though, I think that 30 minutes is more than enough to get some beautiful portraits in a few different locations.
The rest of the timeline depends heavily on your venue. In general, cocktail hour lasts around 2 hours, then around 3 hours for dinner including speeches and dessert. If the weather is nice, I like to take couples out for a short 15 minutes sunset session around dessert time and before their first dance.
My favourite timeline
My favourite timeline looks just like the example but I add a first look, couple session and portraits with the wedding party before the ceremony. A first look is when both partners reveal their outfits to each other in private. I find the intimacy of the moment quite moving and allows couple to be alone with one another (which is hard to do sometime due to the frantic pace of wedding days). You can follow this with couple portraits and portraits with the wedding party. Irish wedding is quite unpredictable, and I find that adding this extra possibility for portraits gives couples a nice contingency plan in case of rain. It also means that couples can cut short or skip altogether the portraits schedule after the ceremony and go and enjoy their cocktail with their family and friends. This timeline would look something like this.
Feel free to use either timeline as a base to plan your own wedding. What matters the most is that you’re happy with the way your day looks like and that you get to do all the things you envision. But please remember, your vendors are there to help you and they have valuable experience to help you plan your day more effectively. Send me a message if you wish to discuss your wedding plans and how to get amazing photos of your celebration.
