A wedding timeline that gives you photographs you actually like

Most couples build the timeline around the ceremony and then wonder, later, why the photographs they love are all from twenty minutes of the day.

It's not a mystery. It's arithmetic. Here's where the hours actually go, and the four decisions that matter more than everything else on the schedule combined.

The four decisions

Before any of the detail: if you only change four things, change these.

1. Work backwards from sunset, not forwards from the ceremony.
2. Decide about the first look early, because the whole shape of the day hangs off it.
3. Cut your family photo list in half, then cut it again.
4. Put thirty minutes of nothing in the middle. It will get eaten. That's what it's for.

Everything below is just the reasoning.

Start at sunset and go backwards

The single best light of your day is the ninety minutes before sunset, and you cannot move it. Everything else on the schedule can move. So that's the fixed point, and the rest of the day gets arranged around it.

But the number you build around is not sunset. It is the time the light actually leaves the ground you will be standing on, which in mountain country is earlier — sometimes much earlier. Ask us, or whoever you have booked, for that number before you fix anything else. If you are getting married near Park City, we wrote about why the two differ so much there.

Once you have it, write it at the top of the schedule and treat it as a deadline, because that is what it is. Everything in the rest of this article is arithmetic working backwards from that one time.

The 4pm ceremony problem

A 4pm ceremony in June is lovely. A 4pm ceremony in October is a scramble.

Work it through. Ceremony 4:00 to 4:30. Receiving line and hugs, which always take longer than anyone schedules, to about 4:50. Family photographs 4:50 to 5:30 if the list is sane. Wedding party 5:30 to 5:50. That leaves you arriving at couple portraits at about 5:50. If your light goes at 6:15 — and in October, on shaded ground, it often does — that is twenty-five minutes, with you still catching your breath.

Nothing in that list is anyone being slow. It is just what those five things take when you add them up honestly, which almost nobody does before the day.

Move that ceremony to 2:30 and the same day has two full hours of slack before the light runs out, plus time to eat something.

About the first look

A first look is when the two of you see each other privately, before the ceremony, usually with just us there.

We are genuinely neutral on this. It is not a photographic requirement and anyone who tells you it is would like an easier day. What it is, is a trade:

With one, you can do most portraits before the ceremony, which means you actually attend your own cocktail hour, and the evening belongs to you. It also means the two of you get fifteen quiet minutes together on a day that has none. Several couples have told us that was the part they remember.

Without one, you get the aisle moment with its full charge, and everything else compresses into the gap between ceremony and dinner. That is a real, defensible choice. Plenty of our favorite photographs come from that half hour.

Just make the choice deliberately, early, and tell us. The timeline is a different shape depending, and swapping late is how things go wrong.

Family photographs: the list is the whole game

This is where timelines die.

Each distinct grouping takes three to four minutes once you include finding people. That is not us being slow — two of those minutes are someone's uncle being in the bathroom. Thirty groupings is therefore ninety minutes to two hours, standing in one place, during your cocktail hour.

Twelve groupings is forty minutes. Twelve is plenty.

What works:

• Write the list as named people, not categories. "Grandma Joyce," not "grandparents." We will read names out loud.
• Put the oldest and the youngest first and release them. Nobody's ninety-year-old grandmother should be standing in a field for an hour.
• Appoint a wrangler on each side — someone loud who knows the faces. This one change cuts the time by a third. It cannot be us; we don't know who anyone is.
• Decide what's a photo and what's a snapshot. Your college housemates at 11pm with everyone's shoes off is a great picture. It is not a formal grouping and it does not belong on this list.

The thirty minutes of nothing

Put a half hour of unscheduled time somewhere in the middle of the day.

It will vanish. The dress will take longer, the florist will be late, someone will cry and need a minute. That is normal and it is fine, if there is slack in the system. A timeline with no slack transmits every delay straight to the end of the day, which is where your portrait time lives.

The buffer is not wasted time. It's the thing that protects the good bit.

A shape that works

Not a prescription — venues and families differ — but this is roughly the version we see go well. Adjust to your own sunset.

The golden-hour slot is the one couples resist and nobody regrets. Twenty minutes. Your food will be there when you get back.

If it rains

Have the indoor answer decided before the day, not at 2pm on the day. Walk the venue with whoever is photographing you and agree the wet-weather spot in advance.

And for what it's worth: rain and snow produce some of the best photographs we make. Overcast is extraordinarily kind light. The day you're dreading on the forecast is often the one that looks best afterwards.

We photograph and film weddings in Utah and Wisconsin. We build this timeline with every couple we work with, venue by venue, before the day — it's part of the booking, not an extra. If you'd like help with yours, tell us what you're planning.