Timelines to please everyone

By Linda & Joe Crosby

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Your timeline is as unique as you are, and is critical to making your day be everything you hoped for. Don’t be afraid to ask for some help from the vendors you have chosen to make things run smoothly and create a timeline that will accommodate the time constraints for all the vendors while pleasing you and your family.

Some couples want everything to be natural and don’t want to have any more than a sketch of the events. Most photographers, or any other vendor, will tell you that those types of weddings end up with a few mishaps along the way, ultimately less photos and a lesser quality of the entire day due to disorganization. It is to your best advantage to do anything you can to make sure careful thought is put into this daunting task.

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By the time you are 30-60 days out from the wedding, you should have gathered enough info to start on your timeline. Vermont Bride has this as a bullet point at about 30 days prior, but it doesn’t hurt to start amassing the info earlier. If you have not hired a wedding coordinator, use your vendors to help––in fact your photographer, DJ, officiant, and caterer are your biggest assets in planning your timeline. It is easiest to start with the photographer since they will be the people that you have the most interaction with throughout your day. They sometimes will work with the caterer and DJ to coordinate events in the absence of a coordinator, so be sure all of them have each other’s contact information early on. You may want to create one combined timeline to coordinate all of the events of both the day of the wedding, as well as the day before for both the bride and groom. Or perhaps create one timeline for the bride and one for the groom to keep each on track with their separate tasks and events.

One of the easiest ways to get started is to plan your event using the starting time of your ceremony and work out from there to create a very rough sketch of events for these two days.

Here are a few questions you will need to think about:

• Are you having your hair done at a salon? Don’t forget to include things like hair, nails, and makeup.

• Where are you and the groom getting ready? Is it close enough for the photographer to coordinate getting images of both in that hour before the wedding?

• How long (in heavy traffic) is the commute for both your bridal party and the groom’s party? Be sure to leave time for loading and unloading the cars.

• Do you want any bride and groom formals taken before the wedding? This helps cut down on time between ceremony and reception for shooting, but adds to pre-wedding time and will require coordinating earlier delivery time with the florist for the bridal bouquets.

• Do you want detail shots of the hall before guests arrive? Be sure to have the florist scheduled to deliver flowers or centerpieces on tables in time to capture that image.

• Have you worked out ceremony details regarding customs, traditions, speakers, and musicians?

• What special events do you want at the wedding: garter, bouquet, first dance, parent dances, cake cutting, speeches, toasts, dollar dance?

• Are you planning on a receiving line or visiting each table at the reception?

• Are there any large family group formals that need to be taken before the reception?

• Will there be children and/or elderly relatives in the formals that need to be included first so that they can sit down or leave as soon as their images are captured?

Now on to the task at hand––you will want to be sure that the timeline is done in a format you are comfortable with changing and making your own. Microsoft’s Excel is usually the tool of choice as it is easily opened with Google docs––your attendants can open it quickly, getting everyone on the same page. But Excel is not the only tool out there, you can also do the timeline in any word processing software. Use whatever you are comfortable with.

Schedule a time to sit down or meet on-line with your photographer to put your timeline together so that you can communicate to each of the vendors when they will need to arrive to have their part of the wedding set up. A well thought-out timeline is worth its weight in gold and will make your day flow seamlessly. Magazines like Vermont Bride and many others have sample timelines to get you started thinking about what events you do or do not want to be a part of your special day and many times you can download a template. Or, you can ask your photographer or caterer if they have a template they use and you can fill in your specific details.

Depending upon the photography package you choose, the photographer could be there as much as 3 or 4 hours in advance to capture all of the excitement and emotion that goes into the preparation––or just 30 minutes prior to set up for the bride to arrive.

They have done this enough times that they have a good feel for how long certain things take and can even help planning the “getting ready” part of your timeline as well. Leave room in your itinerary for such things as a light lunch, breaks and quiet reflection time. You may also want to designate someone to keep the events flowing as the bride is typically not wearing a watch.

Many things need to be taken into consideration in planning: which poses will be done first and allotting enough time to do them all well. The details can be daunting, but once you get them down on paper, they are not quite as overwhelming and can be easily managed. The timeline is a work in progress right up until the day before the wedding since things tend to change. Sometimes the couple will assign a person not in the wedding party to maintain the timeline and keep all the vendors informed of any last minute changes––taking some of the stress off of the couple on the last day or two before the wedding.

You could ask your photographer to keep an eye on the timeline during the getting ready phase to keep everyone moving forward and get you to the alter on time.

One important thing to remember is that even the most detailed timelines and itineraries don’t always go perfectly, in fact there is usually something that doesn’t go quite as planned, so planning for the unexpected and having a buffer is a good idea. It is easier to adjust a little here and there, than flounder all day and be bothered by people asking you and your husband if it is time for something in particular to happen. A well-planned timeline cannot only accommodate both family and vendors needs, but it will ultimately take some of the stress out of the day and free YOU up to enjoy YOUR wedding day.

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The Raidenshine Photography

The Raidenshine Photography

The Raidenshine Photography team consists of two dedicated photographers that have a passion about wedding photography, quality and customer service. Joe and Linda Crosby are both award-winning photographers in their own right and combine to make a great team.

Active members of Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI), they meet annually with other WPPI photographers from all over the world to exchange ideas, new products, and new technologies so that they can bring those ideas and technologies to their Vermont Brides. www.raidenshine.com

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