The importance of a timeline!

For every Wedding we do, I develop a detailed timeline, knowing that no day is perfect, I’ll always put in a little wiggle room, it’s something I learned in the Marine Corps and after 2600+ Weddings. For last Saturday’s Wedding I established one as usual.The Bride asked if I could start even earlier so we could get as much done before the ceremony as possible. As such I carved out a time period of from 2:00 – 4:00 PM from Bride and Bridesmaid’s photos and in between the Groom and his Groomsmen. When I arrived at 2:00 PM for the Bride, not everyone was there and nearly no one had their makeup on.All I could do is photograph the Bride’s Wedding attire. The Groom was to , arrive at 2:30 PM, soI went to the spot where we were to meet – he arrived at 3:35 PM.In between, I checked with the Bride often and they were not ready for pictures. As I was to leave for the Church at 4:00 PM, we completed all our images and as I was about to get into my car the Bride called and said they were ready for photos. When I entered where they were getting ready, still everyone was far from “photo album quality” but I was able to get a few images of the Bride finishing getting ready and the girls with her. Now off to the Church for the 5:00 PM ceremony, arriving at 4:40 PM only to find only the organist? A few guests started to arrive about 4:50 PM, but at this point the Bride had not arrived yet. By about 5:20 PM more guests started to arrive as did the Bride. At about 5:35 PM our Ceremony started. The ceremony, which was beautiful, lasted about 25 minutes and we still had Family formals to do after their exit with bubbles. The couples cocktail hour was at 6:00 PM, entrance at 7:00 PM and dinner at 8:00 PM. We arrived back at the venue at 6:45 PM with no time for any outdoor images. Entrance ended up being 7:30 PM and dinner was finally served at 8:50 PM. Somehow, we were able to shoot 500+ images and a few nighttime shots of the Bride & Groom. Moral to the story: 1) share your timeline with your hair and make-up people. 2) share the timeline with your Wedding Party. 3) plan on extra hands if you are going to need them. 4) understand that your photographer can’t take meaningful images if you’re not there or ready. 5) remember that everyone else; organist, minister, banquet facility, dj, guests and so on and so ….. are working off an agreed upon schedule. Somehow as Professionals we always get it done but boy it’s really hard sometimes!