Laying out your wedding timeline can be challenging. You have to plan when to have your bridesmaids get ready, when your family should arrive and even when your florals and DJ get to the venue. Talk about a headache!

We learned how important this is by making a huge mistake!

Our first few weddings, we asked the bride what time she would like us to show up on her wedding day. We quickly learned that wasn’t the best way to serve our clients because the client has no idea how long it takes us to properly capture the entire day well.

Enter the Wedding Timeline.

One of our main goals as wedding photographers is to decrease the amount of stress on our couples.  Because we know how complicated that timelines can be, we decided that we would create a custom timeline for each of our clients. It makes it less stressful for the client and since we created it, we can feel confident that we’ve built in enough time to capture everything.

We learned in order to create that timeline, we only need to know the timing of one part of the day– the Ceremony. Once we know what time the client wants the ceremony to start, we can lay out the rest of the day based on how long it will take us to photograph each section.

Then we made another mistake.

We used to just ask our clients what time they thought the ceremony should start, without giving them any direction on what time of day is best for ceremonies. How are you supposed to know what time a ceremony should start if you’ve never gotten married before? Or if you haven’t been to as many weddings as we have. To solve that problem, we have created a ceremony time formula that will give you a rough estimate for when your ceremony should begin. Plug in the details based on your wedding and BAM you have a ceremony start time.

The Ceremony Time Formula. 

There are two formulas, one for couples who want a first look, and one for those who do not want a first look.

The First Look Ceremony Time Formula: 

Sunset Time – 2.5 hours = Ceremony Start Time

For Example, if sunset is at 7pm.

7pm – 2.5 hours = 5:30pm

 

The No First Look Ceremony Time Formula: 

Sunset Time – 3 hours = Ceremony Start Time

For Example, if sunset is at 7pm.

7pm- 3 hours = 5pm

 

A couple key things to remember:

1. Google the sunset time on your wedding date because the sunset time changes dramatically throughout the year!
2. Let your photographer know if you have any special circumstances well in advance so they can build that into your custom timeline.

-Chelsea