I got married on November 22, 2014 and my biggest regrets have to do with photos and videos, so here is my unsolicited advice for any brides still planning.
1. Leave more time than you think you'll need for pictures.
If anything or anyone is running behind, it will mess up the timeline for the whole day. Not a big deal, unless you're counting on a certain time span for photos. Consider what time guests will be arriving, what time the sun will set, etc and make sure you leave yourself plenty of time. If that means you need more lag time between the ceremony and the reception, I say so be it. I was worried about having the cocktail hour go too long, so we only had an hour, which got cut to 45 minutes, maybe even half an hour. If I could go back, I would have given us two hours.
2. Have a contingency plan.
Our wedding was supposed to be held outside and I wanted most of the pictures outside, but it rained. Thankfully there was a converted barn for us to move into, but because it was the only large covered space, the guests had to stand around the edges of the barn while the folks in the portraits stood in the middle. It was weird to be watched the whole time and awkward for guests not to be able to mill around. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have suggested we move the photo shoot to the tiki hut. We would've gotten a little damp walking there, but the background would have been a little prettier and we'd have privacy.
3. Carefully consider videography, especially if you plan to use Wedit or similar service.
We hate how invasive a lot of videographers are. We didn't want that bright light following us around, getting in our face, and ruining our photos. Plus, it was kind of a destination wedding, because I'm from Florida originally and a lot of the guests were from up North. We thought it would be nice to have video of the whole weekend, including my bachelorette party. Well, things started to go wrong almost immediately after we arrived. The stressful scrambling led to us completely forgetting about the Wedit cameras until after the ceremony. When we finally handed them out, only one of the guests actually used it. Other guests took video on cameras or phones, which is great, but I wish we had invested in a high-quality videographer and just shared our concerns.
4. Make a photo list, send it to your photographer, print out a copy for yourself. Have it on the wedding day, with the shots you want highlighted.
Remember the rain disaster? Well I was so stressed about it that I forgot to take some of the pictures I most wanted, like a picture of the wedding party all together. If you highlight your MUST HAVEs (imagine you only have 10 minutes, what would you want to get) it will be easier to review the list and identify what's priority should something happen or if you're running out of time. For example, my photographer had the list with her, but it was very long. She showed it to me and asked if we were missing anything, and I was so flustered I skimmed through it quickly and said no. If I had highlighted the most important ones, I could have at least checked for that.
5. If you have specific places you'd like to take pictures, write that down too.
Otherwise you'll be at the mercy of convenience and/or the photographer's vision. If you have a lovely venue and a great photographer, maybe not an issue. I loved our photographer but there were some locations I would have liked to take pictures in that we missed for weather/time reasons.