Well, after the whirlwind that was Amber and Daniel’s wedding hit the blog 4 out of 5 days last week, and after we shot a wedding a week ago Saturday, and since we will shoot another this coming Saturday, we’re handling our post-wedding workflow and pre-wedding prepping simultaneously right now.

I’ve been spending some time thinking about everything that goes into a wedding. Obviously, every bride knows just how much — time! energy! daydreaming! life savings! — goes into each wedding, and our fabulous couples have a pretty good idea of all the work we do for them before and after their big day. But I thought I’d just lay it all out on the table to show the kind of love and care we put into our weddings. Not every photographer works the same way, but this is what Danny and I have found works for us — and for our couples.Initial Consultation Meeting – Via Phone or in Person.
There’s usually a flurry of e-mails involved before, during, and after the consultation, or getting-to-know-you meetings, but there’s always a long, healthy chat with the bride or bride and groom when a new couple decides to have us involved in their wedding. Some couples want to meet in person, but the majority of our couples have actually booked us without ever meeting face to face — we just make sure we get to know each other through our phone call, and that’s also why Danny and I pour so much of our personalities into our website and blog: We know it will help our couples decide whether we’re the right photographers for them; talking or meeting with them also helps us decide if they’re the right couple for us — it needs to be a comfortable fit for both parties. (And we just love our couples!)

Drawing up Contracts and Handling Payments.
Oh, paperwork! If we could settle things with a handshake, I’d be delighted to, but real life doesn’t work that way. Instead, we fill out a new contract for every couple; they sign it, we sign it; we charge their credit card or deposit the check for their retainer/booking fee. And then we draw a big old circle around their wedding date on our calendar, draw stars on it, pepper it with a few exclamation points. Okay, we don’t go quite that far. (Just one star and a maximum of three exclamation points.) We’re always excited to welcome a new couple and look forward to their beautiful day!

Sending Materials to Couple.
Part of what goes to our couples has to stay a secret — shh! — because surprises aren’t surprises once they’re shared with the World Wide Web. But I can tell you some of what our clients receive: A questionnaire, which will help us understand their personalities and tailor our photography to capture those personalities effectively, and a list of wedding day tips, edited to the specific needs and plans of their wedding day.Planning and Shooting the Engagement Session.
Engagement sessions are almost like a trial run for the wedding photography — a great opportunity for us to work with our new couple, and for the couple to get some experience in front of the camera. Most of us are kind of camera shy, so this warm-up helps make sure our couples feel relaxed and natural in front of the camera come their wedding days. We also love being able to give our couples some casual portraits that showcase a slice of their everyday lives. Together we plan where the session will take place and discuss the mood they want to evoke and the wardrobe they will wear. Danny and I draw up a list of any specific shots the couple tells us they want, and come up with a mental list of what we want to capture that day as well. For every shoot, we set a goal — something like “We want to use this beautiful sunset light to show just how romantic this pair is,” or “We want lots of fun, vivid action shots of this couple doing the activity they love,” as I blogged about a couple weeks ago. Before the shoot, we clean all our equipment, charge our cameras’ batteries, make sure our compact flash cards (a fancy-schmancy name for fancy-schmancy memory cards) are blank, pack up all our gear, and double check that we have everything we need. We always make sure we arrive early for the shoot, especially if it’s in a location we haven’t visited before, so we can find the best spots for pictures and help direct the couple when they arrive. Once the couple arrives, the four of us just have a great time for the next couple hours!

Post-Engagement Session Work.
As with any photo shoot, at engagement sessions, we end up with more pictures than our couple will actually want. We carefully sort through the images, choosing the very best ones, and edit each and every one so our couple will see themselves looking as beautiful as possible. Once the images are completed, we custom create a disc cover and order it, custom-create a disc design and print the disc, blog the engagement session, share a few of our favorites on Facebook, create a nifty Animoto slideshow that our couple can share with family and friends, and just recently we’ve started building a personal website for our couple. And of course we deliver the engagement session disc! If the couple has ordered an engagement session book, we get to work designing that immediately, which takes a few days, and then a few more days of production once we place the order with our lab.

Wedding Prep with Bride.
Leading up to the wedding, I’ll spend time talking with each bride about the ever-changing details of the wedding day — sometimes helping plan and organize parts of the day with her, sometimes just reassuring her that everything is going to be perfect. We talk through everything from the types of pictures she wants to any problems she anticipates to the excitement she’s feeling about marrying her best friend. Together, the bride and groom draft a list of the groups they would like to have photographed during their formal portraits and send it to us; they also send us a list of the unique details that will make their wedding one-of-a-kind; if they would like, they also send us a list of some specific shots they want — say a picture of the bride with her dog. We reconfigure those lists, and shorten them when necessary, then get the bride’s stamp of approval.

Building a Custom Wedding Day Timeline.
We do this for every wedding now, and we’ve found it really helps make sure the wedding day stays on track. Before starting the timeline, I talk with the bride (and sometimes groom) about what times are already set in stone — the earliest they can get into the room where the bride will be getting ready, for example, and the start time for the ceremony. Then I build a timeline from scratch, laying out what I know are the ideal amounts of time for each stage of the wedding day, and making sure to build in some buffer time and time for travel. Then the bride and I work together to make any necessary changes.

Scouting the Venue(s).
If the wedding is taking place in a venue we’re unfamiliar with, Danny and I like to see it beforehand, if possible. That way we can plan where we’ll be at any given point during the ceremony, figure out if there will be any possible problems we’ll have to compensate for (extremely strong sunlight, for example, or a really narrow church where we have little room to move). We also like to have an idea of what the lighting situation will be like so that there are no surprises on the wedding day.

Coordinating with Other Vendors.
This is an important step! We like to make sure everyone is on the same page, so we make sure we speak with the officiant, venue coordinator, and wedding planner (if there is one) before each wedding. That gives us a chance to not only introduce ourselves and start a friendly relationship, but also lets us find out if there is anything the officiant doesn’t want us to do during the ceremony (some ministers don’t want photographers near the front of the church during the religious ceremony, for example) and also lets us ask if there’s anything we can do to make the day easier for them. When possible, we also like to get a floor plan for the reception, if it’s at a venue we’re unfamiliar with, so we can set up our lighting plan beforehand.Final Prep for the Wedding.
The day before the wedding, we go through the same steps we take before an engagement shoot — make sure our equipment is all clean and packed, batteries charged, CF cards blank, our walkie talkies are ready, and backup gear added to our camera bag. We get our clothes pressed and laid out. We pack water bottles in a cooler and granola bars — to keep ourselves energized, and to offer to the bride and groom if they need an energy boost during our portrait time together. I print our shots lists and tuck the bride and groom’s questionnaire into my bag so I can refer to it if need be. Together, we visualize exactly what we want to accomplish for the wedding and go over our plan for the day — who shoots which aspects of the wedding ceremony, who has which lenses, etc. We skim through the timeline again to help commit it to memory. If necessary, we field calls from the bride or other vendors with last minute information about the wedding.

Shooting the Wedding!
This is the ALL SYSTEMS GO! time when we have to be super creative and super organized and super speedy  and super boss-like all at once. Because most people don’t realize it, but if there isn’t a designated wedding planner, keeping the wedding running smoothly really ends up falling to the photographer. It’s not in our job description, technically, and we aren’t getting paid for it, but our clients and their families and bridal parties (and frequently the other vendors!) turn to us for help — because we’re the pros, and because if there’s no wedding planner, we’re the only vendors who has been with the bride every step of the way. Plus, at most weddings, we’re the only people who can easily communicate from room to room: We wear walkie talkies all day so Danny and I can tell each other what’s going on, alert one another to a great shot, or help coordinate when the bride heads outside so the groom won’t see her, etc. So we have to stay on top of the schedule and know who is supposed to be where and when and what happened to the bridesmaids’ shoes and the bride’s perfume. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun. But it’s also a lot of hard, mentally exhausting work on top of the mentally and physically exhausting work of capturing beautiful, artistic photos of emotional moments as they unfold and the portrait moments that we have to stage. Add to that the fact that we’re having to stay on top of technical issues, like changing light and figuring out when and how to use our flashes, and you’ve got the recipe for two tired photographers at the end of the day!

Post-Wedding Workflow.
As soon as we get home from a wedding, we download all the photographs to our computer and back them up to an external hard drive. Tired as we might be, we never go to bed before the pictures are saved in at least two places besides the CF cards — because heaven forbid our computer crashes and we lose the images! Either that night or the next day, depending on how sleepy we are, we cull the wedding images, choosing our favorite 500-1,000 or so, depending on the size and duration of the wedding. Then we start editing the images, checking every single photograph that we will deliver to the couple and adjusting the color balance, brightness, and editing out blemishes or distracting background elements when necessary. We design the disc and disc case, blog the wedding, create a slideshow, update the couple’s website, and create an ordering gallery where the couple, their friends, and their family can order professional prints of their wedding day images. For couples who have ordered an album, we also design the album from scratch, first having the couple choose their twenty favorite images from the day, then rounding out the album with other pictures that will help complete the story. We pack the disc up and ship it to the couple, and send copies of relevant photos to the vendors involved.

Enjoying the Couples’ Happiness .
This might be our favorite part. There are few things more wonderful than hearing that a couple is over the moon with their wedding pictures and excited to relive their wedding memories over and over!

So there it is: Everything we work so hard to do for each and every wedding. Frequently, weddings take us no fewer than 45 hours — but they’re even more time than that when you consider that Danny and I are both working a lot of those hours. We care about our couples, and when they’re putting so much time and effort and money into the wedding of their dreams, we want to give a lot of ourselves to help make sure those dreams are captured perfectly. As I’ve said before, and I’m sure to say many times more, it’s a whole lot of work, but I’m convinced it’s the best job in the world.

~ Laura