I don’t know how this particular one is so pervasive. I was just talking about this with one of my clients: when I got married, all I wanted to do was get ready so I could get on with the day and see my love! If I’d have had to sit around waiting while everyone else had gotten their hair and makeup done, and then mine had taken (as it turned out) a whole hour longer than I’d allotted, I think I would have lost my mind. My experience aside, I also see this bridal scheduling snafu happen from time to time (always made by folks with the best intentions) and the bride is always so stressed out when it happens, that I think it’s worth mentioning here.
So: brides, get ready first. Getting ready and, in the end, being ready for your wedding day is really grounding. What’s the worst that can happen? You have time for a toast with your girlfriends before the ceremony … ?
photo: Gia Canali
In fact: scratch that “when all else fails” business. Before all else fails, plan to enjoy the ride regardless. Weddings will always be full of the unforeseeable (and, really, that’s part of the thrill!). After all, the real reason we are gathered here today, so to speak, is the celebration of you and your beloved joining hearts and lives.
photo: Gia Canali
Meeting your expectations is (relatively) quite easy. Meeting our expectations is what you want to empower us to do.
(Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of wedding photography expectations floating around from you and your parents and your grandparents, and while these expectations also are exceedingly important to us, we understand them easily and well. We’re going to meet them and then some. We’re just saying: even so, do everything in your power to make sure we can also give you the photographs we’re imagining for you. We’re not aiming merely to meet your expectations. We’re going for extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, ethereal, take-off-the-top-of-your-head photographs. And that’s what you want to empower us to do. If anyone has great expectations of us, it’s us. Learning to play that to your advantage is what I’m hoping to teach you to do.).
photo: Gia Canali
I’m wading through the ever-increasing volume of images we’re making this wedding season, and certain things do stand out: like the rapture of a couple completely enthralled with one another. They forget about me and the veil (between the presentation of themselves to the world and how they actually are when the rest of the world isn’t watching) disappears, if only for a second.
photo: Gia Canali
Okay: I’m being (more than) a bit flowery, but I think it’s a valid point. Light is our medium.
Congratulations, Amy & Osamu!
photo: Gia Canali
We love wedding toasts! For one thing, hearing how other folks love the bride and groom makes us—and everybody at a wedding, I think—adore the bride and groom even more. And the photographs of the bride and groom and the guests reacting to toasts can be so fun (though, in fact, that could go either way if the toasts are deadly-long or if there are too many of them, come to think of it).
Somehow, toasts are more-often-than-not overlooked in the orchestration and choreography of the wedding day—but they’re important because the toasts themselves can be very meaningful and the photos do actually sometimes make it into the finished wedding album. So, naturally, you want the toasting photos to be their best selves. (And don’t think that this magically won’t happen to you on your wedding day … )
Here are a few easy tips for setting yourself up to have picture perfect toasts:
- Have the speaker stand somewhere with a nice background and nice light, even if that spot is right at his or her dinner table. Ample ambient light is the best kind.
- Please don’t put your toaster in front of an EXIT sign. (This is just an expansion of point #1, I suppose).
- Make sure your photographer is present. If you have a planner, he or she can help with this. If you are diy-planning, you’ll need to keep an eye on this yourself. Although your photographer may stick close by your side the entire rest of the day, during dinner time, she could be off taking photographs in another part of the event, or trying to take a quick dinner break. If unscheduled or unannounced toasts happen, she can miss them.
- Toasts REALLY TRULY need to be short and sweet. Haute wedding planner, Yifat Oren, notes,”it’s a toast, not a roast. Toasts should be short and sweet and moving and anecdotal. The longest amount of time for any one toast should be seven minutes, but preferably no longer than five. You can say a lot in seven minutes.” And, “if you’re planning to have 35 minutes of toasts, don’t do it all at once.” It’s hard for the guests to sit through a bunch of long toasts (read: boring) and can bring the whole party to a halt. If someone really wants to give a long toast or say something much more expansive to or about you and your beloved, the rehearsal dinner might afford a better and more intimate opportunity for that kind of thing.
Check back tomorrow for an interview with Yifat, full of tips from celebrity weddings that are applicable to weddings on any budget.
photographs: Gia Canali
Allowing at least 30 minutes for just the “dressing” part of getting ready is really important—even if you’re wearing a really simple dress. Not only do you not want to be rushed, but you never know when you might need that extra time. Sometimes a zipper breaks, or you need to be sewn into your dress last-minute, or your straps are too long and need to be altered on the fly, or you’ve forgotten some totally essential part of the getup, or … or … or. In any case, even if everything goes off without a hitch, you’ll still need time for putting on all your glorious accessories.
photo: Gia Canali
I’ve been told a couple of times that people wish they’d taken the making of their formal group photo “list” more seriously. So think about the group photos you and your family will really want to have later on. The truth is that the family photo list is not only an organizational tool, used for estimating time needed for the photographs you want and for calling people into the shots; when wedding days go how they sometimes go, these are the shots your photographer will fight to get.
photo: Gia Canali
