Your Wedding Day arrives; you have worked tirelessly for upwards of a year on every little detail.
You have painstakingly chosen things to match the vision you have been dreaming of since you were five!
These things are important to document on your big day!!
So how do you make sure all of these things get their place in history?
For my brides, I walk them thru all of the things I will need in my Wedding Guide magazine so that I can do just that! Most of my brides prepare a bag/box of things for me to take as soon as I arrive with all things details!
Here are a few things to keep in mind when planning your wedding as well as preparing for the detail bag:
INVITATION SUITE-
Choose an Invitation Suite (Your invitations, Envelopes, RSVP cards etc) that matches the design of your wedding.
Use the same color scheme and choose a font that best matches your wedding style! The best way to do this is to hire someone to do a custom Invitation Suite for you. Never fear if this isn’t the route you are taking! Just be sure to pay attention to the way these will look with everything else on your wedding day.
I know it may seem odd, but you have taken a lot of care in choosing your invitations, so I will want to photograph them!
I always ask for two copies of everything (including envelopes, one addressed and one not). This helps me style them in a way to include the full scope in one picture!
RINGS-
When I arrive one of the things I am going to want to photograph will be the rings…ALL of them! A lot of brides think they need to give the groomsmen their wedding band(s), so I make sure my brides know to keep all of the rings with them until after I have had a chance to photograph them.
There are so many lovely reasons to include these as an important part of your details bag! The obvious reason is sentimental. You will love looking at them later on in life and so will your grandchildren! I have also heard of brides losing their rings and if they were ever lost for good wouldn’t you want to have a photograph of the ring you got married with? And this leads me straight into the next reason, insurance! If something happens to your ring, you now have photographic proof of what it looked like for the insurance company!
FLORALS-
Your flowers for the day are so special! They tie the whole wedding together. I LOVE the bridal bouquet. It is one of the first things I look for when I arrive! I love to see the beautiful arrangements, but more so I love to see what my sweet brides have chosen as the floral accent to make her whole design vision come together! I especially want to photograph your bouquet, so making sure the florist knows to have the flowers to you by the time I am set to arrive is a tremendous help!
RECEPTION-
This is a tricky one! A lot of places don’t think to have the reception area ready to go prior to the ceremony. They just think about having it ready by the time the reception is set to start.
Now if you are having a cocktail hour in a separate location from your reception…by all means don’t worry about having it done by the time the ceremony starts, just by the time cocktail hour starts.
WHY you ask? Because we want to photograph your reception area EMPTY! I want to be able to get a shot of the whole room from different angles with no purses on chairs, or people lingering. Then we come in closer and get shots of every aspect of the décor that you took time to pick out! We want your design to stand out on it’s own as a masterpiece! We need about 20min minimum to do this. Whether that is beforehand or during cocktail hour (assuming that is being held in a different location as stated above). This includes the Cakes! A lot of times we arrive to photograph a reception area and were told it was ready only to see that there was no cake set up. We definitely want to photograph the cake in all it’s glory with no distractions around! You spent time and money choosing the perfect cake and baker, and we know that, so we want to photograph it when it’s at its most beautiful!
These are just a few of the important things to have ready for us, and why we ask for them! If you don’t know what to have ready, ask your photographer! If you are one of my brides…you will have all the info you need in your Wedding Guide!!
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