Last fall I wrote a blog post about the importance of wedding day timelines, but I decided it’s a topic well worth revisiting. Timelines don’t get the same kind of hype reserved for wedding gown shopping or choosing your flowers, but I would argue that having a solid timeline is even more important than having a perfect gown. With your second-choice gown, you’ll still have an amazing wedding day. Without a solid timeline, you’ll feel rushed all day, or unsure of where you should be at what time — and you will surely not get all the photographs you want.

So we work on wedding day timelines with all our couples.  They look something like this:

Wedding Day (Photography) Timeline – Jennifer + Cheddy

9:00 – Hairstyling and makeup begins
9:15 – Laura + Danny arrive at the house
9:30 – Detail shots (wedding gown, rings, jewelry, accessories, etc.)
11:15 – Cheddy gets into suit
11:45 – Groom portraits and time to relax
11:50 – Jennifer gets into wedding gown
12:15 – Jennifer + Cheddy first look and portraits
1:00 – Family portraits
1:30 – Leave house to drive to church

There’s more of course, but you get the general idea. And the idea is this: Plan your wedding day to allot plenty of time to what is important to you. And allot more time than you think you’ll need. For everything. I’ve rarely seen a bride’s hair or makeup completed in the amount of time it was “supposed” to take, and formal portraits take longer to set up than couples imagine when they’re planning their shots lists.

This is why I like to be involved in my brides’ wedding day timelines — because I’ve been there, done that, and I know how much time we need to allow for each part of the wedding day, but every bride can collaborate with her photographer to create the perfect custom timeline for her wedding. As I told one of our brides just yesterday, I would rather she finishes her hair and makeup early and has some time to relax with her bridesmaids and pop a bottle of champagne rather than rush to complete her wedding day preparations and feel frazzled as she heads to her first look and ceremony. And as I told another bride earlier this month, it’s essential to think about what will be important to you in the future. Will a bride regret keeping her guests waiting an extra fifteen minutes at the cocktail hour? It might seem like a big deal when the bride is stressing over the final wedding details, but in six months, not even the guests will remember that they had time for two cocktails instead of just one. Will a bride regret not scheduling more time for pictures with her brand new husband? If she doesn’t get the photographs she was hoping for, she’ll wish she had planned differently for the rest of her life.

Plan well and savor the results! Get your photographer involved in your wedding day timeline. Find out how much time you need to allocate to each part of the day in order to achieve the results you want — and then schedule accordingly, with enough buffer time built into the schedule that, if everything goes according to plan, you’ll end up with some extra time to simply soak in the day!~ Laura