So your wedding day is coming up and you are probably a bit anxious. One of the things we like to do for our couple is take things off their plate because the less you have to do on your wedding day the less you have to worry about before your wedding day. We want your special day, and the days leading up to it, to be as worry free as possible. One of the items that causes folks angst is planning formal portraits. When will they take pictures with the family and whom will they take the pictures with? Well here’s our methodology for how we approach your family formals

Make a List and Check it Twice

About 6 weeks before your wedding we’ll send you a worksheet where you can detail all the pictures you really want to be sure to have. It goes through pretty much every variation you can think of (you with each parent, you with all parents, you with each sibling, you with all siblings, you get the point) and it has space at the bottom of the page so you can fill out free form stuff. You want pictures with your college buddies? No worries, we got you

Making the list beforehand ensures that nothing gets missed and it doubles as a checklist so we can mark off what has been done and have a solid record of what is left to do. Once we have the completed checklist we work with you and your team to finalize your wedding day schedule so you know how long things will take and when they are happening.

Communicate Beforehand

Let friends and family know before the wedding that they will be needed for the formals. It helps them to know not to wander off to cocktail hour and then we miss vital time trying to round them up. You can also make sure your officiant makes an announcement at the end of the ceremony that your family formals are right after and they should stay close (which is typically when formals happen).

Assign The Management To Someone Who Isn’t Getting Married That Day

Most of the time couples want to own every task associated with their weddings and this is just a bad idea. The more work you have to do on your special day the less you get to enjoy it. Lean on one of your siblings or lifelong friends who can identify most of the people you want in your formals by sight. This person shouldn’t be someone who is in most of the formals, that way they can round up stragglers while we shoot pictures.

Let Your Photographer Direct The Scene

Sometimes the couple, or other participants, want to stage the photos and this is always a terrible idea. You hired a professional so let them manage the work. This includes the management of onlookers and professional busybodies should you have any of those in your family (could just be me lol). A professional photographer will make sure your family standing around gets their shots while also making sure everything on your list gets taken care of.

Be Adventurous

As we take the formals photos of opportunity will come up. Don’t be so rigorously tied to the plan that you miss a good photo opp.

That’s all we got, see you next week.