Most wedding-day photography issues are timeline issues in disguise. A perfectly capable photographer can’t make great couple portraits in three minutes; the best film editor can’t recover from speeches that nobody could hear. The good news is that almost all of it is preventable with a small amount of planning.
We start about a month before
A month before the wedding we’ll send you a short online questionnaire: ceremony timing, reception timing, the dance floor, the people you really want photographed, anything unusual about the venue, anything you’d rather not photograph. It takes about half an hour to an hour to fill in.
Then we look at your timeline and come back with notes. Often everything’s fine; sometimes there’s a small thing or two: a gap that’s a bit short, a couple-portrait slot that lands awkwardly between courses, a confetti moment that needs the photographer in the right spot.
The two moments worth planning
Most of the day we follow you around quietly and let it happen. Two moments, though, need a bit of breathing room in the schedule.
Group photos. Each shot takes three or four minutes once you count rounding everyone up, arranging them, and the inevitable “where’s Uncle George?” The big all-guests photo alone eats ten. Our advice: keep it under eight to ten groups, which runs about 30-40 minutes. Go longer and everyone, you very much included, will quietly lose the will to smile. You pick the list in the questionnaire; we shoot them between the ceremony and the meal.
Couple portraits. These are the wall-hangers. Twenty minutes is the bare minimum, but forty is where the good stuff happens (add ten if you’ve booked the film). You’ll be glad you gave it the time.
The one timing trap
The classic mistake is a wedding breakfast that starts too soon after the ceremony.
In summer (roughly May to August) it’s easy: the sun’s still up after the meal, which is the best light for couple portraits anyway. We just need time between ceremony and meal for the group shots.
In winter (November to February) it’s dark by the time the meal ends, so every photo has to happen beforehand. Allow at least two hours between ceremony and meal, because real weddings have guests mingling, restroom trips, and a best man who’s wandered off for a smoke. If you’ve only got an hour and a half, it works, but it’ll feel rushed. If you can, ask the venue to nudge the meal later or the ceremony earlier.
Just ask
Timelines are genuinely confusing to plan, and we’d much rather sort it out with you in advance than wing it on the day. So ask us anything. A bit of planning is the difference between great photos taken calmly and great photos taken at a sprint.