This week we booked our photographer! Soooo excited and relieved to have that checked off our list. More on photography in a future post! This week, along with the photography, I have been thinking a lot about the wedding day timeline. I came across a great article that spoke to this and was happy to see that my day-of timeline was in line with their recommendations, phew! Here is a list of their ten common wedding day timing mistakes:
1. Not scheduling enough time for hair & make-up.
2. Attending your final dress fitting alone. This has to do with your ladies understanding how your dress works and therefore saving some potential headaches...the hooks and buttons can be hard to navigate!
3. Not having everyone get dressed early enough. This is about making sure people are dressed before you are so that your mother, father, bridesmaids, etc. are lookin' their best when the photo ops come up.
4. Too much distance (between where you want to get ready and the ceremony location). For my wedding we'll be getting ready about a 30-minute drive from the wedding site. Even this somewhat short distance has proven a little tricky to plan around when we start thinking about things like hair and makeup time, pictures, and transportation.
5. Not planning out time for family pictures. The article makes a great point that it's not often you have so much of your family in the same place with a professional photographer.
6. Cutting it too close with the limos (or any transportation you are using). If you are having transportation like us, you know this all too well. We kept trying to figure out how to cut down the hours, but finally realized the extra money would be well worth it to have things run smoothly on the day of the wedding.
7. Not scheduling time to mingle with your guests.
8. Too little time between the ceremony and the reception. This doesn't apply to those of us having the ceremony and reception at the same place, but a good thing to consider for those who have two locations. This article basically says, don't worry about having time between the two. Guests will have plenty to keep themselves busy.
9. Not doing a "first look."
10. Failing to give yourself a "cushion."
My fiance and I decided to do a "first look" for several reasons, one of them being the day-of timing. We really want to be relaxed and have plenty of time to do the photos with each other, our wedding party, and our families and not feel like we are missing out on the party! And since our ceremony and reception are at the same place, we won't have time in between to do photos.
Do you have any wedding day timing tips? Did you do a first look?