Planning a very tight timeline for your wedding day may prove to be very stressful. Something always runs counter to your plan as causes a delay. Under normal circumstances, several things go wrong, each one causing small amounts of time to be lost from your plan. The little delays add up, and before you know it, you’ve lost an hour, or more. In worst-case scenarios, enough time is lost to cause you to cut out parts of your planned activities. Guess which is the first one scratched, the photo session.

With everything else about a wedding so meticulously planned, photo planning is frequently left out. That’s not because couples don’t think about it. In most cases, the photographer is contacted after most of the timeline for the day is already set. Photographers will make suggestions, but we’re not about to have you reshuffle your arrangements. Instead, we try to work within your timeline to make sure we can meet your needs.

So, that begs the question; how do you plan for your wedding day photo session? The easiest way is to put it on your agenda for the day. Somewhere on your wedding day plan, between “have breakfast” (this should be there too, trust me) and “leave reception” should be an item for “bride and groom pictures”. That way you’re thinking about it. You can plan the time and the location. You can make sure it fits in somewhere. You can also work around everything else that’s involved with that. This gives an opportunity to have a conversation with the photographer to review your locations to see if one of those will work. On the other hand, you can plan to use a specific location. The photographer will give you an idea of approximately how much time they will need, or you can let them know how much time they have.

This level of planning has a profound impact on your images. Planning allows you to relax. If you are relaxed, your photos will look like you’re relaxed. When photos have to be rushed, they look like it, especially portraits. Those of you in the midst of planning your wedding day, pull out that plan and see if you’ve at least considered your pictures. Next time, I’ll share some ideas on how to make those plans fit in comfortably.