Earn cash as you plan. Get a $20 gift card for every 200 points with The Knot Rewards
Wedding Photography and Videography Forum
How did YOU do your pictures? (Or plan)
So we have a photographer booked for only our ceremony, to get all the family and wedding party pictures. I have gotten my FI to agree to a first look, but we don't want to spend the two hours before the ceremony taking monotonous photos. I feel like it will ruin the moment if we HAVE to get all these pictures taken before hand.
Ceremony starts at 5, we have our photographer booked from 3 to 7. That's two hours before the ceremony, and one maybe one and a half after. Dinner starts at 7, and I'm pretty firm on this because we have a hosted cocktail hour from 5:30-7:00. We once waited at a reception for two and half hours for the B&G to finish all their pictures.
My only thoughts are that if we do the first look first and the family photos for the next two hours, its going to be hot, boring and monotonous. But then we could do the Wedding party after the ceremony, and our personal pictures. We want to include up to aunts and uncles on both sides, but we don't want to ask all his close family to show up two hours early to the ceremony. I just don't know what the normal process to do all these darn pictures is. How do you fit all these photos into the 'cocktail hour' if you don't do the first look??
This discussion has been closed.
Re: How did YOU do your pictures? (Or plan)
I'm currently meting with photographers and one of them kind of laid out a timeline, which I think I'll use with whoever I end up going with. FI and I decided that we don't care if we see each other or not, he saw me in the dress the day he paid for it, so about 2 hours prior to the ceremony we're going to do some finishing getting ready photos (if we're not fully ready yet) and then the two of us will take pictures together. If our parents, siblings, and kids are there early enough we will knock out some of the family pictures too. About 30/45 minutes prior to the ceremony we will go back into our rooms and hang out. After the ceremony we will finish up the family photos, because my Grandma won't be there early unless she comes with my parents, and probably take a few more of the two of us...I'm estimating 20/30 minutes since we're going to get a few pics out of the way prior. We decided not to have a wedding party so that's quite a few pictures that won't take up time and everyone we're needing for pictures will know what to do/where to go after the ceremony. The only people we'll probably have to "round up" is our kids (10, 12, and 13) but our parents will be in charge of having them nearby for pictures.
This photographer said, which I believe is pretty common, that he'll get a list of us of the people/pictures we want. It's a great idea to have it planned out to begin with so you can think of all the pics you want and they can be "checked off" as you take them.