My Wedding Preparation for you and me

Okay, so planning for someone’s special day is not just about putting batteries into cameras and then photographing the day. It’s much more involved than that.

Firstly, around a month before the special day we plan a time to sit down and discuss the day in more detail. I normally have these meetings online over video chat. The benefit of this is that it saves us both time and travel, particularly for me when preparation for weddings are at their busiest.

On the call I would normally discuss how the planning has gone, are there any last things you’re struggling with / do you need any help or advice. I’ll also show you how the album design system works – it’s a great piece of software that makes choosing images for your album really easy.

The main reason for the meeting is to actually go through a plan for the day. Ideally I like these calls to be prior to your final meeting with the venue so that you can take what we’ve come up with to them as say this is your plan. It’s such a big benefit putting a timeline together so that you don’t need to worry about anything on your special day; that’s the last thing I want. You’re there to enjoy it, so do that!

Here’s an example for a 1pm ceremony (all at one venue and fairly typical):

Timings

11.00 – Arrive for bridal prep
11.50 – Bride to start getting into the dress
12.15 – Meet Groom and the guys
12.45 – Bride to set off down for the ceremony
13.00 – Ceremony
13.20 – Register
13.30 – Drinks reception
14.15 – Group images (10 or 12 to take approx. 35 minutes)
14.50 – Portraits
15.30 – Bride and Groom visit reception room and then re-join guests.
15.45 – Guests to be seated
16.00 – Breakfast and Speeches
18.30 – Room turn around for evening reception
Second set of bridal portraits during this time
19.30 – Evening reception to begin
20.15 – Cake cutting leading into first dance.

The next part of planning for the wedding is me making sure my photography equipment is all ready to go – so batteries charged, lenses cleaned, memory cards checked and tested, lights tested, spares checked and packed, smart clothing clean and ironed, car checked and fuelled with locations entered into sat nav, wedding details printed and on my phone (including all key addresses, timeline, names and contact numbers of key people, group photo requests, any key information I need to know).

I also like to prepare myself creatively by reviewing the work of photographers I admire and also reviewing the venue websites and any photos I can find of the venue.

That’s is – preparation for each wedding. As I said it’s much more involved than simply putting a few batteries in my cameras and off I go.