fun, informal, and often chaotic
Wedding prep
Approximate time:
1-3 hours
Having a good photographer is always important, and a great photographer can work to make almost any scene into something beautiful on the other end. Many won't admit it, but that extra effort often isn't necessary, and can result in less photos of the things that matter most to you, and more time in post processing, waiting to get your wedding photos back.
I don't necessarily recommend that the bride and/or groom take responsibility for keeping an eye on all these things - so please feel free to delegate to your heart’s content. It is your day, after all!
Here are a few things you can do to make your wedding prep time look even more beautiful in your wedding photos:
1) Simple
On your wedding day, with friends visiting, and family crashing in, it can be pretty difficult to stay on top of the chaos that might be unfolding around you. Just take a step back and think about all the things you could hide away, and take a fresh look at the room(s) you'll be photographed getting ready in.
Some simple things you can do to mitigate this:
- Put all your toiletries and odds and ends in the washroom, closet, or an adjacent room where you can get at them quickly, leaving the actual prep room freer and easier to work in.
- Still too much stuff around the house? Ask a friend or relative if you can do your wedding day prep at their place, and then just bring what you need. This is actually more common than you might think!
-Alternately, you might want to get ready in a nice hotel room, even when you live in the same town as where the wedding is taking place. This allows you to be in the same building as visiting family or friends, and also adds the flexibility moving piles of luggage and boxes to a friend's room across the hall if things are becoming unmanageable.
That being said, make sure you have ready in the same room with you the things that might be important to have photos of, such as your dress, jewelry, shoes, and any special items or accents for your wedding day. You won’t want to run to look for them when you’re in the middle of getting your hair done.
2) Big
Is the space you have mind for prep really large enough for you, your friends/wedding party, all their things, your parents and your wedding dress(es)/suits? What once felt like a spacious room can quickly become cramped when eight people are now getting ready at one time.
Fixing this could be something as simple as moving out into your living room or another room of the house that doesn't have a bed occupying in the middle of it.
If you're all going to be running into each other and stepping on each other's feet, you might end up running behind. In addition, having more room will increase the options the photographer has available to them for angles and will make it easier for them to sneak great candid shots.
3) Bright
One of the first things I do when entering the room is open most of the curtains/blinds. Some rooms, though, are just plain gloomy no matter what you do. I'll bring lots of flash equipment so that I can make the light work however I want it to, but if I don't have to deal with batteries, adjusting lights and angles, hiding light sources, etc, it will save me time to take more pictures, and increase my options while I’m at it. Also, not having light stands in the way, and flashes going off constantly can make your space and time more pleasant.
The artificial lighting already in the room can sometimes be helpful, but it can also be a hinderance. Some fluorescent bulbs cast an unsightly green light while lacking skin tones, some LED bulbs can flicker and create banding in photos, and sometimes the light emitted by multiple different sources in the same room will have different colour casts, making weird and unflattering effects unseen by the naked eye, but which often shows up in photos.
Big windows and natural light are always your best friend!
4) Chill
When planning a wedding, we have to ask about every individual part of the day: "How long will that actually take?"
Ready for the correct answer? Here it is: Longer than you think.
The more time you've padded your day with, the less stressed out you'll be. If you've over estimated one part of the day, you'll just have a minute to sit back, relax, and have a drink or snack with your friends when the times comes.
It's a wedding day, not a wedding hour. You might as well make a day of it and get through everything at your own pace, and not have to always be worrying about the timing. This will also help a great deal with the last point:
5) Fun
Even with all the things you need to remember and accomplish throughout the day, the most important thing for you to do is to never lose sight of what the day is: a celebration. Goof off, tell jokes, take nothing any more seriously than is absolutely necessary. You don't want to be stressed all day, and you don't want to look like you were having a terrible day in your wedding photos afterwards. Get everything out of the way in advance and just enjoy your time with your friends and family.
Ironically, the most important thing you can do to make sure you'll have a great time on your wedding day is to have a good plan in place, and (this one is important!), people you trust that know all about your plans for the day who are in charge of making sure everything happens the way you want it to. By the time your wedding day rolls around, if something goes wrong, it should be someone else's problem. All the planning in the world won't do you much good if you have to tend to little problems as they arise all day. This is Your day, so make sure it's a vacation day, and not a work day!
Once you've gotten all that down, just ignore the photographer unless they need something from you, or you need something from them, and enjoy your day. You might be surprised at the results!
