A little while back, I shared a few tips Luke and I have learned about how to plan an amazing, fun, and totally non-stressful wedding morning! We are so passionate about helping our brides AND other brides create wedding days that are smooth, fun and simple… days that are designed with three main goals in mind!
Our first goal is to ensure the timeline is simple, and that it involves little to no stress, rush or hurry. This means we build in time in case things run behind or we need to change something last minute! It’s a wedding, so we definitely expect the unexpected!
Our second goal is to create opportunities for as many portraits of our brides and grooms as possible. Our couples WANT and LOVE photos of the two of them most of all- it’s their highest priority for photos, and our timelines reflect this goal and make this goal a reality! We do this MOST often through encouraging our couples to choose a first look. This covers that first goal, too, as first looks are the best ways to have non-hurried or rushed wedding days! You can find out more about first looks and why we believe so much in them right here.
Our third goal is an overriding goal in all we do as a business: we want to love and serve our clients the best way we possibly can on their wedding day. If we need to accommodate them in any way on this special day of their lives, we make that happen… often, the timeline is a huge part of that!
No matter what type of wedding day you’re having, a timeline is so very key. That being said, sometimes timelines are incredibly challenging to create! Travel time, wedding day appointments and other circumstances can make this process confusing, and we 100% understand that every wedding day is different. However, we have a starting place that we work from whenever we’re creating an ideal timeline for our sweet couples, and I wanted to share a VERY simplified version of that with you today! I personally work with each of our sweet C&L brides to help them draft THEIR ideal timeline… it’s super detailed, yet simple, and it definitely fulfills each of those three goals I talked through above. However, I hope that this simplified version of our ideal timelines is helpful to other brides as they begin to think about their wedding day and how it will be structured!
First, it’s important to note that our ideal timeline for a wedding day is typically based around 8 or 9 hours of wedding day coverage! This is important to keep in mind as you’re considering what amount of coverage is right for you and your wedding day. We’ve found that our best case scenario is to have about 9 hours of wedding day coverage in order to BEST tell the full wedding day story of our brides and ensure that we are able to capture everything!
Ideal start time: 11:00am
11:00am-12:00pm Bride & groom prep and details
12:15-2:30pm First look & couples portraits, bridal portraits, groom portraits, immediate family portraits, & bridal party portraits
3:00-4:00pm Ceremony, receiving line & extended family portraits
4:00-5:00pm Married portraits
5:00-5:30pm Reception set up and detail shots
5:45pm Grand entrances to reception
6:00-8:00pm The reception and sunset portraits*
*Psst! Soon, I’ll be sharing our ideal reception timelines in order to help you best plan your reception timeline, too! Keep on the lookout!
Ideal end time: 8:00pm
That’s it, you guys! That is our ideal timeline!! Every single day is very different, but this is what we try to stick to as often as we can in order to best capture a wedding day! If certain important events, such as the ceremony, start at a different time, we will back the timeline up or push timing ahead a bit in order to adjust for that. We hope this is super helpful! If you have any timeline questions, please let us know… we’d LOVE to help you out! ????
Have a happy Tuesday y’all!
