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Story time!
Once upon a time, I photographed a super sweet couple’s wedding day.
(I promise you, this particular wedding was like 10 years ago, so it’s no one within recent memory.)
After the ceremony, we had one hour (cocktail hour) to take all the “traditional” portraits: family, bridal party, and bride and groom. If a couple isn’t doing a first look – this is completely normal and since I had put together a timeline with my bride and groom before the wedding – we had this all planned out.
The day was running great. Despite a small getting-ready hiccup (let’s just say, the services of a needle and thread were needed for a member of the bridal party), the rest of the day was running as smooth as silk. Everything was on time, it was a beautiful fall day, and things were going fantastic.
I had completed family portraits, we had checked off all the bridal party portraits on our list, and I was moving into some portrait time with just the bride and groom (the two most important people of the day).
There was a problem though: one of the Dads was getting antsy.
I could tell he was getting anxious near the end of bridal party photos, but after consulting my timeline and watch – we were still perfectly on time. We had a solid block of time left for bride and groom photos before we needed to leave for the reception. So, I (attempted to) ignore him and pushed onward.
I kept seeing him peeking out at us though and I could literally feel his tension growing.
About 5 minutes into bride and groom portraits, I saw him resolutely marching over to us, with “that look” in his eye.
He was upset and he wanted to leave. He felt like he (and his wife, the bride and the groom) were “abandoning” their guests at cocktail hour, and we needed to wrap this up now.
Knowing I needed more portrait time, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to make the Dad happy, but I had an obligation to produce images for the bride and groom (and I knew I didn’t have “enough” yet). Further, I didn’t want to make the bride and groom upset by getting into an argument with their Dad.
I showed him our timeline and tried to let him know that we were right on schedule. I quickly explained that we had about 20 minutes before we needed to head over to the reception, but he would not hear it.
He put his foot down and said that we were done and leaving now.
And so we left.
We drove over to the reception and arrived early.
The DJ wasn’t ready for us and he scrambled to move his own timeline up to get the bridal party introduced into the reception.
The venue wasn’t ready for us, as they still had cocktail hour in full-swing.
The caterer wasn’t ready for us, because after the couple was introduced (early), dinner wasn’t ready, and so we all sat at our tables and waited for (ready for this?) about 20 minutes.
(Just in case you’re curious, I did get some other portraits of my bride and groom – once dinner was over, I pulled them out of their reception for a short window of time and we were able to get what we had missed earlier.)
While that was probably my most “overbearing” parent on a wedding day, I’ve definitely met my fair share of other well-intentioned, but domineering personalities. That’s just part of being a wedding photographer. Thankfully, over the years I’ve gotten better at observing these personalities and heading them off before they take over the entire wedding day – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still present.
For some reason, a lot of parents seem to think that they need to “babysit” the bride and groom on their wedding day.
And while I do understand (after all: most parents act as the financier of wedding days and thus take on the roll of “host”), there is a difference between being a good “host” and micro-managing every aspect of a day.
Together with my brides and grooms, I put together customized, comprehensive, detailed timelines for every single wedding day. I know the day better than anyone and typically act as the “coordinator” to keep the day in line. And, after being a wedding photographer for 14 years, I’m pretty good at it (if I do say so myself).
So, my advice to parents on wedding days is this:
- If you know you are an anxious person when it comes to schedules and being on time (I fall into this category), get a copy of my timeline and work with me, instead of against me. (If the Dad in my story had had a copy of the timeline ahead of time, he would have realized that pushing us to arrive at the reception venue early was not going to help anyone – we still had to wait for dinner to be finished and ended up “wasting time” sitting at our tables, when the guests could have still been mingling and enjoying cocktail hour, and I could have been finishing up portraits of the bride and groom.)
- If you are acting as the host of the wedding, arrange separate transportation so that as soon as family portraits are over – you can go join cocktail hour – instead of waiting around while we take bridal party and bride and groom portraits.
- If you are very hands on with the wedding prep and have volunteered yourself for a lot of tasks on the day of the wedding – do yourself a favor and delegate those tasks to someone else. Whether it comes in the form of you hiring a day-of wedding coordinator or simply asking a close friend or family member to take over those tasks – pass those off to someone else. (Trust me, this is money well spent.) The least amount of things you can have to do on the wedding day – the better. Sure, you can supervise certain set-up in the morning, but let someone else handle the actual “doing” so that you can relax, be in the moment, and enjoy the fact that your son or daughter is getting married.
No one needs a babysitter on a wedding day – the vendors you hired (assuming that they are competent, experienced professionals) don’t need babysitting, the bridal party doesn’t need babysitting, and the bride and groom definitely do not need babysitting.
You do not need to be present at every single moment, micro-managing things (and taking photos on your phone – that’s what I’m there for).
Allow me to give you permission right now to RELAX, be present, and actually ENJOY the day! After all, as much as the wedding day is “all about” the bride and groom (it is), as the parent, you are a major part of the day as well. You should be able to have fun, let loose, and have a great day too.
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