STICK AROUND: Some time during your wedding day, you’re going to want to do portraits with your family members and close friends. Make sure you send them an email or a text letting them know that they’ll need to stick around after the ceremony. Be sure to send them a reminder email today, a week from your wedding date and the night before so that they don’t forget. Time is a commodity during wedding days and looking for someone who has wondered off will delay you and cause you much unnecessary frustration.
SHOT LIST: Send me a shot list of the groups you want to have portraits with immediately following the ceremony. Just to be clear, don’t send a list of the individuals you all want pictures with (i.e. I want a picture with Camron. I want a picture with Grandma). Rather send me a list of the actual groups (i.e. “Bride, Groom, Kelvin, Olivia”, “Bride, Martha, Terrance”, etc.). I will go through this list group by group. During this time, it is important that we do not deviate from the list because it will be difficult to keep track of who we got pictures of. If your elderly relative and/or family friends are slow moving and can’t stand for a long time then be sure to list them to take pictures first. This list is best done in a Google Doc so that it can be easily updated up to the last minute. If you do it in a word doc then you’d have to send it again and again as things change.
HELP WANTED: Since I don’t know your family’s faces, it will help for you to designate someone to help me identify people as I go through the list. An ideal candidate would be someone who has a relatively loud voice to help me call names. It is also important that they can stay focused. A previous couple designated someone who couldn’t stop talking with other guests and so that slowed down the process signIficantly.
POC: Please send me two day-of contacts (email and phone). I would like for one to be a bridesmaid that I can communicate with so I know where to go when I arrive. However, if you’ll have your phone near you and you don’t mind taking calls and giving directions then be my guest. The second person should be the wedding coordinator or whoever is running point at your wedding. I’ll need this contact so I can go to them with wedding questions and play-by-play. As a bonus contact, I could use the venue coordinator’s contact information.
TIMELINE: Send an updated timeline in case there are any changes. Also best done on a Google Doc.
DETAILS: Visit the following links. They contain a list of items for you to have for me when I arrive so I can get pictures of them. They will be the first pictures of the day. Please note that you don’t need all of these items. If you have them, great. If not, no worries: Bride’s Items | Groom’s Items
YOUR SPACE: Visit this page within a week of your wedding day. It’ll give you tips on how your getting ready space should look: My Getting Ready Space
(Not necessary but helpful) Strongly consider telling your guests not to use their phones to record or take pictures during the wedding ceremony. In my humble opinion, it doesn’t look good on pictures at all and many of those people can get in the way of a picture that I need to take. Encourage them to just enjoy the ceremony and leave the documentation to us. In addition to sending an email out to all of your guests, ask the officiant, wedding planner, or building coordinator to make an announcement at the beginning of the ceremony.
(Not necessary but helpful) If you can, please send me the list of vendors that will be on site so that I can coordinate with them.
