When it comes to wedding day timelines, I have seen it ALL. When I started second shooting for other photographers several years ago, the one thing that I noticed that makes the most difference in how smoothy the day goes is a solid timeline. I have seen everything from no timeline at all to a very detailed, down-to-the-minute timeline. Whatever your personality is, I think it’s absolutely a must to at least have a basic structured timeline with all of the major events of the day.

Here are three reasons why you should have good wedding day timeline based on my experience.

1. You won’t run out of time for what’s most important to you! Having a good solid timeline, with some wiggle room built in, is the best way to make sure you have time for those special parts of your day that you don’t want to miss. If it’s important to you to have gorgeous bride & groom photos, you want to make sure you’ve built that into your timeline at a time that is optimal for lighting at the locations you’ve chosen. If you have your heart set on bridal party shots at a location that is twenty minutes away from your venue, having that set in your timeline will assure you have time for that. Unexpected things will happen on your wedding day and you don’t want those things to throw a wrench in your plans for the day. You don’t want to be disappointed when you wake up the next morning and realize that you only had five minutes for bride & groom pictures because family photos took 45 minutes. That leads to the next reason.
2. Everyone will be on the same page! A well thought out timeline that is shared with all the vendors, bridal party and family will ensure that everyone is on the same page and will be where they should be at the right time. Family photos can be a huge problem when it comes to time, so making sure that all of the family members know exactly where to meet immediately after the ceremony will help keep you on time for the next thing, which is usually bridal party pictures or bride & groom pictures. It’s also important for all of the vendors to have the SAME timeline! Something that I do to help this process is ask the bride to give me all of the email addresses for the vendors on the wedding day questionnaire. Once the couple and I nail down our timeline, I email it to all of the vendors to make sure we are all working on the same one. For one recent wedding, I hadn’t gotten an email address for the DJ. On the wedding day, I worked off my timeline and was very excited to arrive at the reception location with time to spare . . . until I went to introduce myself to the DJ and he had us arriving 45 minutes earlier. That meant I had little time to shoot reception details and set up my lighting and he had to squeeze everything on his agenda into a much tighter spot so that people could eat the food that was already starting to get cold.
3. A timeline reduces stress for you on a day that should be fun! When I work through a timeline with my bride and groom, I assure them that this timeline will allow ample time to do what I need to do and for them to enjoy their day. Once we set a timeline, I don’t want my couples to worry anymore about this on their wedding day. I want them to know that I will keep everyone on track, manage any detours and let them think about having fun and enjoying their day. If something goes awry on the big day, I do my absolutely best to manage the situation, working with the other vendors and/or wedding party and keep the bride and groom from worrying at all.

I hope this post is helpful in convincing you that a wedding day timeline is a must! I’ll be posting in a future Wedding Wednesday post about my sample ideal timelines and things to consider, so be sure to check back in for those posts.