7 INSIDER TIPS: How do photographers prepare for weddings?

Last Updated: February 14th, 2020

Of all the wedding photography tips we talk about on this blog, the most important ones always end up being those about preparation for the wedding day.

A wedding photographers job really begins before the big day. In our opinion, the most successful wedding photographers prepare effectively to eliminate stress and confusion during the wedding, and maximize their ability to capture BEAUTIFUL photos their clients will love.

7 Tips to Prepare for Photographing a Wedding

1). Standardize your wedding prep

We have created a checklist we go through in order to prepare for each and every wedding we shoot.

By doing this, we are able to remove a lot of the headache by standardizing our process.

This lets us achieve the goal of providing a consistent service to all our clients again-and-again because a checklist makes everything easily repeatable.

Some of the things that we include are:

A list of common emails we need to send out such as check in emails, questionnaire emails, and even payment reminder emails. All of this can actually be automated as well in a platform like Honeybook.
A list of all the things we need to bring along for the wedding – this includes all of our gear, printed timelines, shot lists, etc.

We will be releasing our full comprehensive checklist as a downloadable PDF for FREE soon – stay tuned!!

2). Collaborate with your clients

Communication is massively important for success as a wedding photographer.

We think most people would take this as a given…

What you need to do is take that communication up a notch to a full scale collaboration.

By actively working together to relay necessary info about the wedding day so you can effectively manage expectations and make sure you end up photographing everything they want and need – you’ll end up better prepared in the process.

The easiest way we keep this door open for our clients is by simply telling them – “if you have any questions while you’re planning your wedding and want to run them by us, feel free to let us know!”

Often – we’ll reiterate this a few times to help them realize that it isn’t just an empty gesture, but we are really there for them!

Yes – it really is that easy!

3). Make time to meet in person

Because we book so many of our clients based off emails, phone calls, and Skype meetings – it’s incredibly valuable to have face-to-face time before the wedding. This allows us to get to know each other without the stress and pressure of the wedding day.

Most of the time, we recommend our couples book an engagement session for this very reason. We actually include these in most of our wedding photography packages.

Engagement sessions are great because we get to meet each other, and the couple gets some experience being photographed by us. We hear again-and-again from our clients how valuable it is to have engagement photos done because it removes some of the anxiety they might otherwise feel heavily on the wedding day.

If you don’t have an e-session together, don’t fret! Even meeting up over a cup of coffee can be a great way to get together, too!

4). Make a Wedding Timeline

The single most important part of our wedding prep comes in putting together a wedding photography timeline. This is the biggest collaboration between our couple & us!

Normally, we are able to put together a great timeline in a few simple steps:

Send out a wedding questionnaire to your client. This should request specific information you will need to know about that will play into the timing of the day and other important bits of info.
Review the responses and provide feedback. Ask your clients clarifying questions if you have any, or simply let them know everything looks great and you’re going to work on the timeline!
Craft the timeline with realistic expectations for how long certain events will take. If you are wedding photography beginner, this may be tougher than it sounds. As we’ve shot many weddings, we’ve become used to the flow of the average wedding day – and know to always budget more time than we need as much as possible. As an example, we normally allocate 30 minutes for family portraits. Most of the time, we get through these in about 10 – but it can take extra time when family members…disappear…
Send the tentative timeline to your client, and ask for feedback. By putting together the timeline, you are helping to reduce stress and effort on your client – but you will want their confirmation that what you have put together works for them.
Revise (if needed) and finalize.

Wedding timelines are not hard to put together – but they do take a little time. We suggest beginning this process at least 1 month before the wedding day to ensure enough collaboration time.

5). Pack Your Gear Early

You have the wedding date on your calendar and know it’s fast approaching, so it’s a good idea to start gathering your things together so you’re not rushing on the big day.

One of the earliest mistakes we made as wedding photographers was being unprepared because of thinking we could handle all of our packing on the day. It turns out – the only thing that is good for is forgetting things.

Now, we make sure our bags are fully packed at least the day before. This let’s us take our time, clean our equipment (if you’re not doing this get a simple and cheap camera cleaning kit), and make sure everything we need is accounted for. And don’t forget all the batteries!

For more photography gear advice, check out our Recommended Gear section. We also have a great Wedding Photography Gear Checklist you can review to make sure you have what you need to get the beautiful images your client’s want from you!

6). Put together your wedding outfit early

Now that the most important things are situated like your camera equipment and timeline, there is one other big things wedding photographers need to have ready: their clothing!!

This actually used to be something that stressed us out – mostly because we never wanted to feel too dress up or too dressed down. To help figure out our wardrobe – we’ve started asking couples what their attire for the day will be. Some weddings we’ve gone too have been super casual at a campground – this doesn’t exactly call for a fancy dress and/or a suit. On the other end, we’ve been to more formal ordeals where people show up in tuxes and sequin dresses – so having options in our dressers is valuable for sure.

No matter what you are wearing – it’s important to have it prepared and ready to be put on early. Like your gear bags, we try to have this situated at least the day before. This means clothing picked out, washed, ironed, laid out and ready for us.

And guys – if you’re wearing a tie and don’t know how to tie it, prep the tie in advance too so you don’t spend 15 minutes in front of a mirror trying to figure it out. 🙂

For some outfit inspiration – the below is basically what we wearing too every wedding:

Casual Women’s Wedding Attire:

Casual Men’s Wedding Attire:

Formal Women’s Wedding Attire:

Lightweight dress – typically stick with more modern colors like black with a splash of color (if any at all)
Black flats

Formal Men’s Wedding Attire:

In addition – we both use a Holdfast Moneymaker harness to carry two cameras each. It’s a cheesy name for the product, but it works very well and compliments our attire in both casual and formal settings.

After shooting over 50 weddings now (with many more on the way…), we’ve learned the most important thing is being comfortable.

During our earliest weddings, we would get really dressed up and it ended up being overkill. Not to mention – sometimes it made it hard to work (we’re looking at you 110 degree weather barn wedding with long sleeve shirts and a tie).

These days, we would rather not have our clothing choices inhibit our ability to take great photos.

We also don’t want to be a presence that distracts from the wedding day, either. So you can never go wrong with a simple outfit, and pick muted colors (like black and grey).

If in doubt for a wedding you are going to photograph – just ask the bride what the attire is for the day and choose accordingly!

7). Mental preparation is important, too!

Of all the wedding photography prep tips we can offer – this one is overlooked by many!

Take time to mentally prepare for the wedding day. Normally, with a timeline in hand, we are able to visualize how we are going to approach the day.

Of course, mental preparation also means mental relaxation. So one of the biggest things we do to prep ourselves for the big day is actually slowing down the evening before. Unless we have another shoot or client meeting (and we try to avoid doing this as much as possible…), we’ll aim to make time to just relax.

Seriously – some Netflix & Chill goes a long way to get us ready for shooting weddings.

Conclusion

Wedding photographers have a lot of responsibilities.

The first of these is making sure they are well prepared to photograph their client’s weddings.

In our time shooting weddings, we’ve grown significantly. When we started off, we would always forget little things here and there – and while never the end of the world – it always added stress that wasn’t necessary. We hope this post helps you to know exactly what you need to do to be ready to take the BEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL photos you can for your clients!!

7 INSIDER TIPS: How do photographers prepare for weddings?