Hi everyone,
This is my first post here as my FH and I are just getting started with wedding planning!
My FH is Armenian, so we will be having our wedding in an Armenian Church. It has been such a frustration as we are very limited with reception options within a reasonable distance to an Armenian Church. However, we toured a country club on Sat and both fell in love, and it's 20 mins from a church! We put a tentative hold on Sept 15, 2018 and have a week to officially decide.
Now my question is about pictures. We had originally decided to be very traditional and not sleep together the night before (we live together) and not see each other until the ceremony. Now, however, we are considering if that might not work due to wedding pictures. We plan to spend the night before and night of the wedding at the country club hotel with our immediate families. Our reception (beginning with cocktail hour) won't start until 6 or 6:30 PM, and sunset is at about 6:50. We have use of beautiful gardens and the golf course for pictures, so we can get some pretty amazing pictures. We are concerned we will only have about 30 minutes to get pictures in before it gets dark. My FH suggested we can have an hour or 2 between ceremony and reception for pictures, but I think that's incredibly rude. Our wedding is only about 60-70 people and mostly his big Armenian family (lol), but I still think it's rude to just let guests fend for themselves for that long.
So now we are stuck with the option of breaking tradition and doing pictures earlier in the day before the ceremony, having a 1- 2 hour break between ceremony and reception, or risking having only 30-45 mins for pictures, and I'm not sure what the best option is. My mom and sister did point out that doing pictures before the ceremony means my hair and makeup will be at its best, which is a good point, but there's still that part of me that wants the traditional walking down the aisle first look.
Thoughts?